Empowering Patient Wellness

Question five, what could a healthcare professional do to make me feel better? I think when patients come to me as clinician and I see them either as a pre-assessment anesthetist or I'm seeing them to give them some lifestyle advice before they have large surgery, my advice to them is you're not alone. You're not the only person that's feeling this way. You're not the only person struggling to stick to your goals or your rules. And that we are all human, and we all do it differently. And that's okay. To take one day at a time to take steps that will support us achieving those goals, whether it's weight loss, or diet control, or good nutrition, or doing some exercise, one little step at a time, nice and slow. Small goals, maybe just five minutes each day if it's exercise for the first week, and then maybe up it to 10 minutes when you feel a bit better, recognizing that the endorphin release associated with doing exercise will actually kind of motivate you to do more, because you really want that endorphin release. So that's often the easy thing to do. So start small and appreciate that you're not alone and that there are support groups out there that will support you doing it, patient groups and patient communities who are going through the same thing, who will offer you other advice as well. And as a healthcare professional, I just want my patients to see the new challenges that they are achievable in their own time, in their own way, and nobody's going to criticize them for that. And that's the important thing.