Health reforms should empower and focus on prevention
Over the past five or six years I’ve used my expertise as a former cyclist and academic to do a bit of coaching.
It’s more an ‘‘art’’ than a science, although being a professor in exercise physiology has certainly helped in understanding why things are done, not just what.
A number of my charges have tasted competitive success, with some ending up as national champions, competing in world championships, and few even going onto full professional careers in Europe.
Success from my perspective though was whether the athlete enjoyed the journey and whether they became a better person from my input.
My coaching philosophy is that a coach ought to make him/herself redundant. Meaning that, after coaching an athlete for some time, that athlete should be able to coach themselves.
They should have learnt enough from me, and about themselves, so that they know what training to undertake to meet their goals, and know how best to prepare for competition. At some point they then should be able to coach someone else if they choose and put something back into the sport.
It’s a sort of succession planning, it’s empowering for the athlete, and in any case, I could get run over by a bus some day.
That’s not to say that my input might still not be useful; advice here and there, a bit of guidance and string-pulling still helps.
There are plenty of coaches who work the opposite way. They try to make themselves more essential to the athlete as time goes by, not empowering the athlete but keeping their ‘‘recipes’’ secret. For that coach it might be a bit of an ego thing, and if they are getting paid, it’s shoring up an income.
What you then get is a dependency of the athlete on the coach, and then it’s really hard if the coach/athlete relationship falls apart or breaks up for some other reason. How often do you see a sudden decrement in athlete performance when the coach disappears?
So the key to continual improvement is that the athlete is continually learning, becoming empowered and taking responsibility. Responsibility for performance improvement, taking the kudos for winning and not blaming others when they don’t.
Coaching is not confined to competitive sport. Most of the things you learn in life are from a coach in the broader context, whether that coach be mum, dad, kaumatua, other whanau, friends or teachers.
Learning how to take care of yourself, to live a healthy lifestyle is pretty much the same as learning to be good at sport.
Good parenting and/or guardianship will teach you how to live so that you are empowered to make good decisions, and become a responsible adult.
A health system which does not empower a person is always going to be costly and fail. That approach is like the bad coach – it just encourages dependence on that system and allows it to become more important.
It does not develop a person who takes responsibility for their own health, but reinforces that there is a solution to every health problem in a pill bottle.
On the other hand, a health system which takes an educative approach is future proofing – the preventative approach, one that engenders responsibility.
I believe that our national health system, like a good coach, should have a blue-sky goal of making itself largely redundant.
With the foundation based on primary prevention, it should teach people about themselves, so they can meet their health goals, and know how best to prepare for later life. At some point in time they then should be able to teach the next generation how to live a healthy life.
That’s not to say that a blue-sky health system would never be useful, providing advice here and there, and swiftly dealing with important health issues if they arise, like our ‘‘redundant’’ coach.
Changes were recently mooted for the NZ health system to make it more efficient and more effective. Hopefully these are aimed at empowering Kiwis to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. But if empowered and responsible, you can no longer blame ‘‘the system’’ if the results don’t go your way.
Steve Stannard is a Palmerston North business owner and former academic.