Providing Nutritional Care in the Office Practice: Teams, Tools, and Techniques

Provision of dietary counseling in the office setting is enhanced by using team-based care and electronic tools. Effective provider-patient communication is essential for fostering behavior change: the key component of lifestyle medicine. The principles of communication and behavior change are skill-based and grounded in scientific theories and models. Motivational interviewing and shared decision making, a collaboration process between patients and their providers to reach agreement about a health decision, is an important process in counseling. The stages of change, self-determination, health belief model, social cognitive model, theory of planned behavior, and cognitive behavioral therapy are used in the counseling process.