COUNSELING SUPPORT TOOL

Decorative Image: Image of the Counseling Support Tool

Speaker Notes:

The first section or column of the Tool shows the actual questions in the Getting Started section of the Guide. The questions provide an assessment of your patient's daily physical activity and eating behaviors and lend themselves to general recommendations based on the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. The highlighted answers are the ones that do not meet the guidelines, meaning behavior change is needed.

Please note that questions 3, 4, 10, and 11 ask about a patient's preferences and barriers to physical activity and healthy eating. Because these questions do not provide a direct assessment of current behaviors, they are not part of the Tool.

The second column of the Tool provides the relevant federal guideline for each specific question.

The third column of the Tool provides the recommendations that you can make for answers that require behavior change. Along with these recommendations, your knowledge of the patient's history and your professional judgment should be used to determine the areas that your patient may need to change.

You then record these recommendations on page 10 of the Guide. You can also direct your patient to pages 13–20 of the Guide and to the corresponding Reaching My Goal Tip Sheets for additional information. The Tip Sheets expand on topics that are presented in the Guide. They are discussed in more detail at the end of this module.