Life Medical Centre Leads the Way: Lifestyle Medicine Approved as Extended Skill for Advanced GP Registrars
As of March 2024, in a pioneering first, Lifestyle Medicine is now an approved and accredited ‘Extended Skill’ for advanced GP Registrars to elect in their ‘Extended Skills Training’ in their final placement.
This Extended Skill is available to term 3 or term 4 GP Registrars at Life Medical Centre, located in Erina on the Central Coast in NSW. Life Medical Centre is a first-of-it’s kind hybrid General Practice, which has successfully blended full-service General Practice and Lifestyle Medicine for intensive chronic disease care under one roof.
Co-founded by Dr Michelle Reiss, an ASLM Fellow, International Board of Lifestyle Medicine Certified Practitioner and Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist, the Life Medical Centre model takes an interdisciplinary team of GP’s, Clinical Neuroplasticity Practitioner, Registered Nurses, Accredited Dietitian, Exercise Physiologist and Life Coach, and presents whole-person care within a healthcare home.
Our model of care will teach GP Registrar’s how to assess and create action plans or ‘lifestyle prescriptions’ for patients within the Bio-Psycho-Social framework, knowing that a whole-person approach is needed for effective sustainable change. Registrars will be supervised on how to de-prescribe, participate in Shared Medical Appointments, and utilise chronic disease item numbers and case conferencing efficiently.
Registrars will also be guided on how to apply Motivational Interviewing techniques as well as engage patients as a Coach, rather than an Expert, to assist and empower patients to be accountable for their own healthcare. The model of care at Life Medical Centre is aligned with the RACGP’s ‘Quintuple Aim’ approach and strongly endorses the concept of patient-centred care, health equity, clinician wellbeing, the pursuit of better health outcomes and lower healthcare costs.
Life Medical Centre is incredibly proud to be the first private practice in primary care to be offering Lifestyle Medicine to the next generation of General Practitioner’s, and we hope to see the continued growth and adaptation of Lifestyle Medicine throughout more primary care settings.
This is not only a great advancement for Lifestyle Medicine within Australia, but a step toward progressive change to chronic disease within our communities on a national level.
Dr Michelle Reiss
Dr Michelle Reiss is a GP and Lifestyle Medicine Intensivist, with 26 combined years in General Practice, as a Hospitalist and in the Emergency Department.
Michelle is the co-founder of Life Medical Centre on the Central Coast which is a hybrid “GP - Lifestyle Medicine” practice. She is a pioneer in the application of Lifestyle Medicine in Australian primary healthcare and has received acknowledgements and awards for her work as a Changemaker, Pioneer and Innovator in practice.
As part of an International expert panel of Lifestyle Medicine Intensivists, she has published papers on Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies and chronic disease measurables.
Michelle firmly believes effective healthcare cannot be achieved without a Bio-Psycho-Social approach and she draws significant provider satisfaction from seeing patients not only add years to their lives, but also life to their years.