Is Doing a Health Coaching Course a Good Idea?

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  aoeueoa on 11/01/2018 - 21:59

  https://au.indeed.com/salaries/Health-Coach-Salaries

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    Dollarsandsense on 11/01/2018 - 22:37

    Thanks, interesting to see where health coaches are working (as much as the salaries they are reporting)

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  aoeueoa on 11/01/2018 - 23:31

  Doesn't look to be worth a 5k investment. Maybe invest in a skill or qualification that can be 1-2 steps up from her current job.

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  MishyMoo on 12/01/2018 - 02:43

  Its a growing industry. I'd encourage her to do what she is passionate about, and if this is it, encouragement could be in the form of finding the course that will give her the most benefit. There are online forums where you'll get ideas on which courses are best. 5k is not a huge price to pay for education.
  I'd look under Nutritional Counseling.

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  ms_caz on 12/01/2018 - 06:55

  I would be very careful about enrolling in a course with a private provider college. Some of these have folded and left the students in the lurch - with no qualification, no record of units already achieved and no reimbursement of money paid up front for their qualification.

  Also, although the health and fitness market is a growth industry, it is very much oversaturated at the entry level. Cert 2 in Sport and Recreation is one of the most popular VCAL Vocation Education and Training courses, and many of the young people who take this course are planning to move into the area of health and fitness, looking towards both sports and nutrition sciences. This may not be exactly the course your wife is interested in but it is one which is in the same field. Not only will there potentially be a lot of competition for jobs but the professional standing and recognition of qualifications in this area may be diluted. Additionally, the health and fitness area is very much a casual and sessional market, so it isn't something to consider in terms of a steady, ongoing, fulltime employment opportunity.

  If your wife is interested more specifically in the nutrition part of it, then ideally a qualification at tertiary level in dietetics or nutrition science would be needed - this would require university study. Alternatively, she could also look at courses in counselling (again, be aware of private provider courses which do not necessarily have industry recognition).

  Looking at a job search engine such as indeed.com is a great idea - in particular if you look closely at where the health coach jobs are (in terms of which industries) and what they involve (qualifications and previous experience). I just had a quick look and it seems that the title encompasses a very broad range of roles, from working in disability, to sales, to return to work (likely a good fit with the OHS background she has) to fitness coaching. Do any of these roles actually sound like what your wife plans to do in the future? I would encourage you to speak with potential course providers to find out exactly where their graduates are employed and in what capacity (eg full time, sessional etc) because they are likely to be focussed on the number of students graduating from their courses (ie, defining success in terms of their own profitability), rather than emphasizing the number of students who have found employment as a result of the study/courses they have undertaken.

  If your wife plans on starting her own small business instead of working for an employer, then I would also recommend that she carefully investigates the resources such as those offered by Business Victoria http://www.business.vic.gov.au/ I know there are a lot of holistic health services available and that this is becoming increasingly popular - she will need to investigate how to create her own business in a way which will enable her to succeed, so her business skills will need to be just as sharp as her passion for health and wellbeing.

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    Dollarsandsense on 12/01/2018 - 21:09

    Thanks for your good advice. The role of a health coach seems to be to act as the middle man between the client and a range of specialists. In some ways becoming a specialist would cause a health coach to be biased and not recommend the best path for a client.

    i.e. a health coach may take someone that could do with exercise and recommend they join a sports club or gym.

    Increasingly the focus of work safety is about prevention and with that comes a focus on wellness. Part of her time at work is now allocated to proactive "wellness campaigns"so it would come in handy there.

    Someone who is solely a health coach with no other training would definitely find themselves in a saturated market by the looks of the hundreds of health coach training providers popping up.

    We both like your points about starting a more formal training pathway. I got involved in this when I heard the infomercial style American Health coach training centre ads she was listening to and $5k for a course :-)

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  ms_caz on 12/01/2018 - 22:12

  Patient advocacy/intermediary roles are likely to increase in the future, and since they deal with the human factor they are unlikely to become automated/outsourced. So on the face of it, it certainly sounds like a positive future career move and a good fit for your wife's current interests and skill set.

  My feeling is that some combination of wellbeing (perhaps health and fitness), counselling (perhaps even medical social work) and formal health promotion qualifications might lead to "qualifications" in this area. If you are in Victoria, Deakin has a well regarded Health Promotion degree which would be worth investigating. http://www.deakin.edu.au/courses/find-a-course/health-scienc…