One of the most important decisions your patients will make regarding their overall health is to incorporate regular physical activity (PA) into their lives. Your encouragement can be a powerful influence in this decision. The EIM Summary Sheet provides a quick overview of Exercise is Medicine® and the recommended physical activity guidelines. EIM has developed a step-by-step Health Care Providers' Action Guide to help you integrate physical activity into your practice. The Rx for Health series of patient handouts provides supporting information to patients with various medical conditions and for sedentary adults, older adults, teens and children.
We understand that your time is limited, and every minute counts. The HCP Action Guide provides an implementation framework to help you utilize all the members of your clinical team to:
- assess the current PA level of your patient;
- provide brief advice and/or write an exercise prescription
- refer your patient to physical activity resources (programs, places, professionals, or self-directed resources).
To help you get started, here are additional resources and answers to frequently asked questions:
Know the basic national physical activity recommendations and share these with your patients. At minimum, encourage your patients to decrease their sedentary time and integrate short periods of activity over the course of a day (walking, standing, any and all movement, etc). Provide the EIM "Sit Less. Move More." handout. Every active minute counts!
References:
BM Pinto et al.
Z Sabti et al
C Di Loreto et al
EA O'Connor et al