Content Objective: Risk Factor Modification/Counselling
By the end of the Family Medicine Clerkship, the medical student will be able to:
- Identify patients who would benefit from risk factor modification: patients who smoke, patients with substance abuse, patients who are overweight, patients with medical conditions that risk factor modifications would have a beneficial effect such as coronary artery disease, diabetes, hypertension, renal disease.
- Conduct an assessment of where the patient is in the change cycle: pre-contemplative, contemplative, preparing, action/trying, maintaining, terminate/advocate/transcendence.
- Assess patients social context to assist in making recommendations about lifestyle modifications that are compatible with the patients social context i.e. financial context, social norm context, available resources.
- Counsel patient in lifestyle modification as appropriate for their stage in change cycle, social context and their identified risk.
Mandatory Clinical Encounter
- Lifestyle counselling
Resources*
- Substance addictions clinical card, LearnFM
- Problem drinking part 1 - Screening and Assessment, BCGuidelines.ca 2013
- Problem drinking part 2 - Brief intervention, BCGuidelines.ca 2013
- Vallis, M et al. Modified 5 As: Minimal Intervention for Obesity Counselling in Primary Care, Can Fam Physician 2013 Jan;59(1): 27-31
- Reid RD, Pritchard G, Walker K, Aitken D, Mullen K, Pipe AL. Managing Smoking Cessation. CMAJ 2016: 188:E484-E492.
* Where a specific resource is not listed for a particular objective, please refer to recommended general texts/websites. Resources have often been selected from the Clinical Practice Guidelines and Protocols in British Columbia and Alberta’s Towards Optimized Practice Clinical Practice Guidelines. These are often concise summaries of national guidelines.