Behaviour Change, Physical Activity & Women's Health: Episode 115 with Orla O'Doherty

Hello & Welcome to the Podcast!

In today's episode, I'm joined by Orla O'Doherty @thecliniccoach for a chat about using coaching skills for behaviour change, especially around physical activity in postpartum women

Orla shared her journey, including insights from her masters training in behaviour change and health coaching, explaining key frameworks such as COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour) and emphasising the importance of helping the people we work with identify their own goals, rather than prescriptively telling them what to do.

We discussed practical strategies including goal setting, habit formation, motivation maintenance and the challenge of implementing these in clinical practice.

We highlight how coaching skills can liberate the clinician's role from being a fixer to supporting the person's self-efficacy, noting that this approach not only helps the people we are working with, but also reduces frustration for healthcare providers, while making clinical work more effective and sustainable.

Some of the topics we covered:

Behaviour change in health coaching

Health coaching on Postpartum care

Effective goal setting discussions

Behavioural goals in patient care

Motivation vs Willpower

Patient resistance in physio strategies

Trust, compassion and how to deal with challenges

and much more!

Orla is doing great work on changing how we can help move from the old model of healthcare professionals acting as mechanics to fix people, but rather empowering them with self efficacy toolboxes - she offers coursework on all of this so make sure you're following her on instagram

Want to learn more about a bio psychosocial approach to Perinatal Pelvic Rehab? I designed my new online course to cover all of this and more, from preconception ,through pregnancy and into postpartum and beyond. Full of up to date evidence and 'how to' strategies, from PGP to DRAM and R2R!

all of the info on this and all of my other online courses can be found at CelebrateMuliebrity.com

Until next time, Onwards & Upwards, Mx

#celebratemuliebrity