This blog was written by Christopher Lewis, PCI Ambassador and NHS Operations Learning and Development Manager.
Personalised care isn’t something we can embed through policy, guidance or new processes alone. If we want conversations with patients to feel genuinely different, we need to give the workforce the confidence, skills and space to work differently too.
At Greater Manchester Training Hub, that thinking sits behind our Personalised Care Institute Level 3 Health Coaching programme. By July 2026, 197 colleagues across Greater Manchester had completed the four-day programme, and we have learned that developing health coaching capability is about much more than delivering a course.
Making personalised care part of everyday practice
One challenge we wanted to address was the perception that health coaching was an additional task.
Primary care colleagues work in demanding environments, often with limited time and increasingly complex patient needs. A ten-minute consultation, a long-term condition review or a conversation with someone struggling to make a change does not suddenly become longer because we want it to be more personalised.
We therefore designed the programme around a practical question:
“How can we equip staff to make personalised care part of everyday practice rather than an additional task?”
The first two days establish a foundation in coaching and mentoring, including listening, questioning, reflection, rapport and goal setting. The final two days focus on health coaching and personalised care, including motivational interviewing, shared decision-making, health literacy, behaviour change and supporting self-management.
The emphasis throughout is on practice. Participants use case studies, demonstrations, structured conversations and reflection to build a flexible toolkit they can adapt to the person, situation and time available.
The approach is deliberately future-paced and motivational. Rather than concentrating only on problems or what has happened before, participants learn to help people explore what they want to achieve, recognise their existing strengths and identify realistic next steps. The focus is on possibility, ownership and what someone can do next.
From giving answers to creating partnership
Health and care professionals are often trained to assess problems, provide expert advice and identify solutions. That expertise remains essential, but there can also be an instinct to move quickly towards the ‘answers’.
Health coaching does not ask practitioners to step away from professional responsibility. It helps them combine their expertise with curiosity, partnership and greater attention to the person’s own motivations, circumstances and capabilities.
Learners describe listening for longer, using silence differently, asking more open questions, avoiding unsolicited advice and supporting people to develop realistic goals for themselves.
One participant summarised it as:
“Focusing on what a patient CAN do, not what they CANNOT do, when coaching.”
It is a small language change, but a much bigger change in the relationship between practitioner and patient.
Learning across professional boundaries
Participants have included GPs, social prescribing colleagues, care coordinators, managers, nurses, pharmacists, advanced clinical practitioners, healthcare support staff, physician associates, GP assistants and health coaches.
Personalised care is not the responsibility of one profession. Learning together gives people the opportunity to understand each other’s roles, hear how colleagues approach similar challenges and develop a shared language around coaching, patient agency and shared decision-making.
Participants also bring current challenges from their own work, keeping the learning grounded in the realities of primary care.
Beyond the course
Another important lesson has been that four days of training is not enough on its own. People return to busy jobs. Priorities compete. Skills can fade, and real situations are often more complicated than anything explored during a formal programme.
That is why we established the GMTH Health Coaching Forum as an ongoing community of practice. The forum gives participants space to revisit techniques, discuss real cases, share what has worked, reflect on what has not and learn from colleagues in different roles.
One GP described it as:
“A timely reminder to put what I learned during the coaching sessions into daily practice as a GP.”
For me, this is an important part of sustainable workforce development. Learning needs opportunities to be practised, applied, reflected on and refreshed.
What are we learning about impact?
Our evaluation shows positive changes in participants’ knowledge of health coaching approaches, confidence in using coaching skills, understanding of personalised care, use of questioning and goal-setting techniques, health literacy and intention to apply these skills in day-to-day work.
At the same time, we need to be careful not to overclaim. Much of our current evidence is based on participant feedback, reflection and reported application. We do not yet have consistent quantitative evidence showing longer-term changes in patient outcomes, and developing that evidence is an important next step.
What we can already see is how personalised care becomes tangible through everyday interactions: a practitioner listening for a little longer, someone being asked what matters to them, information being explained more clearly, or a patient leaving with a goal they have chosen for themselves.
These changes may appear small. Collectively, they are how personalised care becomes part of how we work, rather than simply something we learn about.
Read the full Greater Manchester Training Hub case study: GMTH PCI Level 3 Health Coach case study
Find out more about the Primary Care Integrated Development Programme: https://gmthub.co.uk/integrated-development-programme-idp/
Christopher Lewis Operations Learning and Development Manager Greater Manchester Training Hub
Christopher Lewis: www.linkedin.com/in/christopherlewis1/
Greater Manchester Training Hub: www.gmthub.co.uk/