Coaching from the perspective of family medicine: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Family medicine as a generalistic medical discipline is among other things characterized by its holistic approach. In recent years, the term coaching has become more widely used and is also used in the health care setting. Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to examine the question of how coaching from the family medicine perspective might be defined and what consequences might be drawn from these results. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the keywords “coaching”, “health coaching”, “resilience coaching”, “primary care”, “family medicine” and “family physician” in the databases PubMed, Web of Science, and EMBASE and supplemented by manual searches. Results: A total of 2370 publications were screened, of which three could be used to answer the research question. However, a unique definition of coaching does not exist. Usually it is referred as a client-related process, aiming to reach client-defined goals. Coaching is designed to empower clients to be more active in improving their own health, using a broad range of methods and approaches that are already partly used by family physicians. Conclusion: Some coaching methods are already used by family physicians without particularly naming these as coaching methods. Among the different coaching methods, there are indications that some could also be successfully used in the primary care for the patient. Therefore more research in these methods seems to be promising.