What Are the Differences Between A Health Coach & A Licensed Practitioner?

Today I am going to take a stand on something that Dr. Daniel Rieders brought up in the interview/ conversation that we had last evening with other medical doctors which I do believe deserves to be thoughtfully investigated by someone such as myself who is without the licensure that he and the others have. 

Dr. Rieders raised the important point that many doctors are squandering their professional status by allowing their university-hospital employers to dictate the way they run their practices. He further asserted the problem with the many nurse practitioners and physician assistants that are now doing the majority of the patient care, with some doctors being happy to spend their time on only the large income-producing activities with their patients meaning surgery and prescribing drugs and lab tests. 

This next piece may rattle some of your heads and yet it is something of great importance as ever with more health coaches come online to deliver healthcare that they really have no business in doing acting in the role of a medical doctor when they lack the education of doing so. Dr. Rieders explained why the health coaches are so beloved by those who really do not understand the lack of knowledge of how the body truly works — for that takes years of education to fully learn. 

The main reason that many people are seeking out health coaches is that doctors will not take the time to even listen to their patients. Sometimes it is a time issue and sometimes it is a feeling that they know everything and that the patient merely needs to follow their medical orders. So, it is the doctors that are causing this issue at times dismissing the very real concerns of their patients leaving the patients feeling unheard and unrespected. 

I have to say that I agreed with all of Dr. Rieder’s comments because the reality is that it seems to me after working with clients both in the conventional world of medicine and psychiatric that the more initials they got after their names the deafer they got to their patient’s needs and concerns. I can also say that I have great problems with many people who feel that just because they overcame a psychiatric problem that they have the ability to help others when they are void of the reality that 20% of those with depression will commit suicide, and a proportion of those with depression actually have bipolar and then there is the differentiation between bipolar 1 and bipolar 2. But it gets more complicated than that because what is the difference between the mood dysregulation in one that has bipolar and the one that has a borderline personality disorder — or what about the difference between one that has bipolar with psychotic features and one with schizophrenia? Because the reality is that even those with fancy degrees confuse these diagnoses all of the time. In fact, what is to say that the symptoms that look like depression aren’t depression at all, but rather it is a hormonal issue with either the thyroid or the lack of sex hormones when folks get further along in life? Or perhaps it is an issue of lack of ability to metabolize their amino acids from the proteins they eat therefore are incapable of even making the neurotransmitters for feeling emotionally stable and mentally clear. Or, what about the fact that medications can have paradoxical effects making an antidepressant bring on depression instead of taking it away? Are you getting my point here?

 Dr. Rieders is absolutely correct in his assessment that there are many things that health coaches are doing when they haven’t the knowledge to actually deal with these very real medical problems. And, though I never was certified I most certainly did 1.5 years of nursing school so learned about the body, medications, etc. and I also did many years in the field of mental health with real clients and real mentors to teach me what I needed to know to effectively help many on top of a ton of education and life-long learning. The work in hypnotism and NLP that I do works because I have this foundational knowledge from years working in the conventional world of medicine and psychiatry. I left it because like Dr. Rieders I was unhappy with just dealing with symptoms instead of the root causes of the problem, however, neither of us would be able to do what we do as successfully as we do it without that knowledge base — NEVER! 

There is something very problematic with the notion of having good intentions gone bad for not knowing what one does not know. I have always been one who believed that it is up to the person who caused the harm regardless of the good intentions to make good on it in some fashion. And, trust me, I have had many clients over the years who brought me to task for certain things. My response has always been to take responsibility for whatever occurred and work to create a better relationship or to at least close the working relationship with a recognition of what needed to be accounted for while giving the client the information of what they gained from our work together. It’s called being a ‘professional.’ 

Learning: One needs to understand the scope of care that a person is capable of working in before employing anyone to help you. If you need true medical or mental health care, best you go to people who have a proven record of helping many others with your same situation. Because, it is up to you, the client/patient to discern who has the best capacity to help you. Coaches are not licensed by any state board, and neither are hypnotists, NLP practitioners, or Time Line Therapists (R) — these are all certifications without any legal standing in the United States for you the client unless the practitioner/coach has done something so egress that it warrants going to court. But, I also know in the world of hypnotism it is very difficult to prove the hypnotist did anything wrong — many male hypnotists will record their sessions cover themselves in the case of female clients to prove this to the client and therefore any court of law. It is also helpful to have the recordings for further exploration of the issue at hand so the recordings can serve a double purpose here. 

So if you are a health coach be very careful about your scope of care and the same with the hypnotist/NLP practitioners because you may find yourself being charged with practicing medicine without a license.

 Note: For any Medical Doctors and Doctors of Osteopathy please go to our private Facebook group specially designed to help you to “Reclaim Your Practice & Your Life” where we are going to be helping you to learn how to break out of the soul-killing, energy-depleting world of Western medicine at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/446088636622065