Tier One coaching is especially valuable if  the coaching client is elderly, traumatized: or afraid of “medicine”, The coach can be of significant help to her client if the client comes from another culture/society and is unfamiliar with health care practices in the “new” culture/society, If one’s client is without family or social support (living in isolation) the health-based coach can fill in as a caring and assisting support service.

A colleague of mine provides this type of coaching for several elder clients who are without family or consistent community support. My colleague has often made herself available to her clients when then have fallen, suffered a minor stroke, or went to the hospital with a life-threatening fever (occurrences that are all too common among the elderly). She provides “hands-on” assistance, helping her client check in at the physician’s office or hospital. She also sits in on meetings of her clients with the physician. One of her clients recently held her hand and told her (with considerable emotion) that he believes he would not be alive right now without her caring support. While many elderly men and women need full-time health care assistance, others only need to know that a Tier One health-based coach is available when needed.

Tier Two: Amelioration

In keeping with the Cliff metaphor, the Tier Two Health-based Coach encourages her client (who has been “saved” by the net) to seek and maintain health care practices that are of value in their recovery and in their avoidance of further complications. Frequently, with Tier Two coaching, the coaching client has had a “wake up” call – having suffered a stroke, having been given a startling medical diagnosis regarding diabetes or a pre-cancerous condition, or having just recovered from a broken limb.

“What do I do to avoid further injury or illness?” The health-based coach can help her client answer this question in three ways: (1) identify appropriate ways to pose this question to their health-care provider, (2) suggest articles, books and reports that the client might read for their “self-help”, and (3) ask client challenging and generative questions regarding their own health habits (what led them to fall from the cliff) and potential sources of personal as well as family and community sources of support for (and resistance to) their new health habits. This third mode of coaching assistance (asking generative questions) is often of greatest value–and most often missing in a client’s life.