The current recommendation of the S3 guideline on gonarthrosis clearly shows that we need to change, and medicine needs to change. However, the recommendation to take responsibility for changing one’s lifestyle through self-management can only be achieved through education.
Findings from lifestyle medicine, in particular from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the programs of Harvard Medical School (MIND Body Course Harvard), clearly show the importance of psychosocial support in a medical setting: Prevention and prehabilitation, or perioperative preparation, require new, effective care formats. One such innovative model is Group Medical Visits (GMVs), also known as Shared Medical Appointments (SMAs).
This form of medically supervised group appointments enables doctors to provide evidence-based knowledge, lifestyle strategies, and individual motivation to several patients at the same time, even under time pressure (which is thus reduced). GMVs offer a realistic and effective solution, particularly in sports medicine, for example in preventive programs for patients with statutory health insurance or in the perioperative setting.
See also the article How to use shared medical appointments in under-resourced communities, whose core message is that SMAs are an innovative, tried-and-tested tool of lifestyle medicine for closing gaps in care, promoting prevention and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship in difficult care environments.
Lifestyle medicine – not just a word, but a therapeutic anchor
All too often, the term “lifestyle” is used inflationarily in medicine – as a buzzword in lectures, on slides, or as a fig leaf in concept papers. But lifestyle medicine means more than that: it stands for evidence-based changes in health habits and is now an internationally certified specialty with six clearly defined, medically relevant pillars: nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep, social connection, and abstinence from harmful substances – see HERE.
You can see what this might look like in the video from Massachusetts General Hospital: Overview of the MGH DGIM Healthy Lifestyle Programme
In concrete terms, this means for practice: We must target one of these pillars – preferably during the initial contact.
Advantages of group medical visits:
– Motivation & compliance are proven to increase
– Time and cost savings for practices and patients
– Reduced stress for everyone involved
– Improved preparation for surgery through structured prehabilitation
– Holistic approach based on lifestyle and mind-body medicine
As Prof. Tobias Esch and other experts emphasize in THE MIND, new formats of care are needed to meet the challenges of non-communicable diseases – GMVs could be a central component of this.
In this context, reference should also be made to the studies “Age Self Care-Resilience, a medical group visit program targeting pre-frailty: A mixed methods pilot clinical trial” and “Social Capital and Cultural Health Capital in Primary Care: The Case of Group Medical Visits.”
Autoren
ist Diplom-Sportwissenschaftler mit Professional Master’s Degree in Sports Medicine sowie postgradualen Weiterbildungen in Mind-Body-Medizin (Harvard Medical School), Psychoneuroimmunologie und Lifestyle Medicine (American College of Lifestyle Medicine); Verleger der sportärztezeitung.
is a certified sports scientist with a professional master's degree in sports medicine and postgraduate training in mind-body medicine (Harvard Medical School), psychoneuroimmunology, and lifestyle medicine (American College of Lifestyle Medicine); publisher of the sportärztezeitung.
