Counseling patients for lifestyle change: making a 15-minute office visit work.

Lifestyle counseling is an intervention that can improve chronic disease management as well as patient and provider satisfaction. Patients and providers are often frustrated with difficulties faced in the implementation and maintenance of lifestyle change. Can we change this paradigm? Are there new strategies that work and can be implemented in a typical office visit? The medical literature confirms the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions and recommends that lifestyle counseling be considered as a cornerstone of care. Here we present a case study of a midlife woman to show how motivational interviewing can be used to help her identify and meet her health goals.