Health coaching is the skillful use of evidence-based conversations, clinical interventions and strategies to safely and actively engage clients who have chronic conditions or are at moderate to high risk for developing them. Health coaches are licensed or credentialed professionals.

Wellness coaching is a process that challenges clients to develop their inner wisdom, identify their values, and transform their wellness goals into action by facilitating healthy, sustainable behavior change. Wellness coaching draws on principles from positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, motivational interviewing and goal setting. Wellness coaches are not required to be licensed or credentialed health professionals.

Both health and wellness coaches:

• Partner with clients who are seeking self-directed changes
• Promote client health and well-being
• Display a belief in the client’s capacity for change
• Honor the client as an expert on his or her life
• Ensure that all coaching interactions are respectful and non-judgmental

Nurse coaching is a skilled, purposeful, results-oriented and structured client interaction that is provided by Registered Nurses for the purpose of promoting achievement of client goals. (Dossey, Hess, et. al, 2013)

Nurse coaches promote and facilitate the growth, healing and wellbeing of the whole person by using coaching principles and healing modalities that integrate body-mind-emotion-spirit-environment. Nurse coaches are required to have several years of nursing education and experience as a foundation to developing their coaching skills.

Nurse coaches integrate coaching competencies into any setting and specialty area of nursing practice to facilitate a process of change or development that assists individuals and/or groups to actualize their potential.

1. Establish the relationship and assess client’s readiness for change
2. Identify client opportunities and issues
3. Assist client in establishing goals
4. Structure the coaching interaction
5. Empower clients to reach their goals
6. Assist clients in determining the extent to which their goals were achieved

(Adapted from Hess, D., Dossey, B., Southard, M. Luck, S. Schaub, B., & Bark, L. (2013). The art and science of nurse coaching).

Nurse coaches work with the whole person using principles and modalities that integrate body-mind-emotion-spirit-environment to promote health, wellness, and wellbeing while they facilitate their client’s growth and healing. Nurse coaches are supportive and encouraging, building on the client’s strengths rather than attempting to correct weaknesses. Nurse coaches provide guidance and resources to the client who is the expert on their own needs and choices.

Examples of nurse coaching services include helping:

• Hospitals to improve nursing staff retention
• Individuals to improve their overall health and well-being
• Insurance companies to reduce the cost of disease management

Some nurse coaches work in private practice; some collaborate with other health professionals in a group practice, and others are employees. According to surveys, nurse coaches can earn similar or more income than they do working in hospitals.

See the educational programs that offer Nurse Coach training and are endorsed by AHNA.

n the past, each of these professional roles has been distinct:

• Coaching – Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The coach is the expert at coaching, not necessarily the subject matter expert on the client’s topic of interest.
• Counseling – Counselors are trained to diagnose and help the client with emotional problems, their past, or their dysfunction, while the coach’s role is to assist clients with achieving what they want in the present and future.
• Mentoring – A mentor is a trusted guide, advisor, and subject matter expert who shares their experience while bringing the “mentee” up the ranks. A coach is not necessarily a subject matter expert.
• Consulting – A consultant is an expert who is called on for professional or technical advice. They understand the problem and present solutions. Consulting is different than coaching because with coaching, most of the answers come from the client.

However, in the last few years, these distinctions are becoming blurred.

• Coaches are beginning to offer ideas, solutions, options, and/or advice to their clients like consultants and mentors do.
• Counselors are using more strength-based approaches, with less analysis of the past and more focus on the client’s present, like coaches do.
• Mentors are realizing they are more successful when they incorporate coaching into guiding and supporting their mentees like coaches do.
• Consultants are finding they are more effective in guiding major change when they use a more facilitative style and a less expert-based one like coaches do.