Course overview

Lifestyle Medicine First Aid is an online course for health professionals designed to provide practical knowledge and skills for Lifestyle Medicine application and implementation in practice.

Specifically, the Lifestyle Medicine First Aid course is tailored to GPs and medical specialists, allied health professionals, researchers, educators, health executives and health service delivery personnel. 

Upon successful completion, participants will be awarded with a certificate of completion for CPD purposes.

Read all about the course, the topics and presenters here.

Please note:

If you are wanting the extra recognition as an ASLM Accredited Lifestyle Medicine Doctor or Professional, please see our ASLM Accreditation course

Who is this course for?

• Medical and allied health practitioners who are interested in developing a foundational knowledge of Lifestyle Medicine and gaining practical tools for the transition to practising from this perspective.
• Health professionals enrolled in the ASLM Fellowship. This course will earn candidates 120 points towards the Fellowship.

How long will this course take?

The course comprises around 18 lecture hours of practical CPD-style education, with around half of the lectures devoted to practical skills and the remainder to introductory content relating to the Lifestyle Medicine core competencies.

In addition to the lecture hours, you will need to allow additional time for self-study including required and optional reading, participation and assessment tasks.  We recommend that you allow 2 hours of self-study time for each 1 hour of lectures.

Learning outcomes:

1. Describe Lifestyle Medicine in terms of its definitions, scope and context, processes and applications
2. Illustrate the evidence-base for Lifestyle Medicine across its key domains
3. Utilise Lifestyle Medicine in practice, including nutrition, physical activity, sleep physiology, social connection, tobacco cessation and more
4. Apply practical knowledge of health coaching, facilitating behaviour change and use of the multidisciplinary team
5. Investigate new and innovative models of care, practice processes, cultural considerations and the professional role

There are also separate learning outcomes for each module in the course.

Course modules:

Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine

• Lifestyle Medicine definitions and context
• Evidence for Lifestyle Medicine
• Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine
• The Lifestyle Medicine Practice – Models of care
• The Lifestyle Medicine Practice – Practice processes and the interdisciplinary team
• SMA lite – Introduction to Shared Medical Appointments as a process in Lifestyle Medicine
• Cultural considerations
• Practitioner’s personal behaviour and role modelling
• Professional role, your scope of practice, ethics and record-keeping
• Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams

Applying Lifestyle Medicine interventions to create real change

• Behaviour change techniques and practice – Theory and application
• Health coaching – Introduction
• Health coaching – Experiences and optimisation
• Lived experience – Patient-centred, co-design, peer group and facilitation
• Lifestyle Medicine intervention programs

Lifestyle Medicine domain overview

• Physical activity – Overview
  • Physical activity and health – Introduction
  • Physical activity assessment
  • Physical activity prescription
• Nutrition – Overview
  • Dietary guidelines – Introduction
  • Nutrition assessment – Introduction
  • Nutrition prescription – Introduction
  • Nutrition science VS popular beliefs – Myth busting – Introduction
• Sleep physiology – Overview
  • Sleep physiology – Introduction
  • Sleep physiology – Factors that influence sleep
  • Sleep physiology – Sleep quality
  • Sleep physiology – Common sleep disorders
• Social connection, positive emotions and purpose
• The health benefits of nature and social inclusion
• Fundamentals of tobacco cessation – Introduction
• Fundamentals of managing risky alcohol use – Introduction

About the final assessment

Based on what you will learn, you will write a response to each of the following prompts. Each answer should be a minimum of 200 words and include referencing where appropriate.

1. Define Lifestyle Medicine (LM) and describe how you would apply them in your profession.
2. Describe how you would conduct a readiness assessment and apply stage-matched, practical, motivational and behaviour change techniques to help patients develop and maintain healthy behaviours. Illustrate your answer using a real or hypothetical patient case of your choosing.
3. Describe the new/revised models of care, practice processes and cultural considerations that you can integrate into your practice to improve your patients’ health and wellbeing outcomes.

Inclusions:

• 3 years access to the course
• Electronic access to the 486 page text Lifestyle Medicine (3rd edition) by Egger et al, under licence from Elsevier valued at US$67/~A$99 (RRP US$90/~A$133 )
• Access to our Education Coordinator for course questions
• Around 18 hours of recorded lectures and on page content
• Required and recommended reading
• Participation and assessment tasks
• Comprehensive reference lists
• Downloadable presentation slide notes
• Certificate of completion for CPD purposes

Prescribed text

Lifestyle Medicine: Lifestyle, the Environment and Preventive Medicine in Health and Disease (3rd edition)

Egger, Binns, Rossner & Sagner

ASLM is proud to make an electronic version of this landmark 486 page textbook available to students of this course free of charge under licence from Elsevier/Science Direct.

You can access the book and instructions here.

Enquiries:

For enquiries related to this or any other ASLM course, please contact ASLM’s Education Team at  or call +61 03 7020 6996.

Other ASLM courses and workshops

ASLM hosts a variety of in-person and online courses and workshops across Australia and New Zealand throughout the year. Designed to increase participants’ understanding of the theory and application of Lifestyle Medicine, they can be undertaken as individual sessions to support professional development or to contribute towards ASLM Fellowship points.