This course will benefit any health care professional who wants to know more about obesity, and how to confidently and competently support their patients to change their behaviour(s). It will be particularly helpful for clinicians working in musculoskeletal contexts.
Course overview: This course will provide an overview of obesity; its aetiology and pathology, and current management including non-surgical, pharmacological and surgical options. There will be a focus on behaviour change and how clinicians can use theory and evidence to support patients in this. Jennifer will share her knowledge from her work as clinical specialist in obesity management services, and from her research in behaviour change interventions in the field of obesity.
The course is designed to be interactive and thought provoking and will support delegates in increasing their knowledge and skills so that they feel more confident when working with people with obesity.
This course is appropriate for any healthcare professional, whose patient caseload comprises patients with obesity either as a primary or associated condition. It will be particularly relevant to clinicians working in musculoskeletal contexts. Delegates will leave the course with a sound understanding of contemporary behaviour change theories and models, and transferable skills that they can apply to their own areas of practice.
Learning outcomes:
To increase knowledge of the aetiology of obesity – why it’s not as simple as eat less, move more.
To increase knowledge of the pathology of obesity and associated conditions.
To understand the current management of obesity including emerging pharmacological treatments.
To increase delegates knowledge and skills in in supporting patients with obesity and targeted behaviour change.
Course content/modules: The course is split into two parts.
The first looks at the aetiology of obesity, directly challenging the popular discourse of ‘eat less, move more’. In this section, Jennifer will review the evidence for the obesogenic environment, and how those with a susceptibility to it are likely to find it more difficult to maintain a ‘normal’ weight or BMI. Here pathology of obesity and its associated conditions will be considered, as will the current management strategies.
The second part of the course will focus on the practical management of obesity, with a particular emphasis on how one could support a patient to change a target behaviour. This will be firmly linked with the theory and evidence base, and related back to the content from the first part of the course. This will allow delegates to link behaviour change theory with current practice so that delegates can identify the proposed mechanism of action for these different interventions. Delegates will then be able to use this knowledge, to critique approaches in their own areas of practice.