Can you explain your lifestyle medicine experience?

Other Ways of Asking:

1. I see in your CV that you have experience in lifestyle medicine. What value can you bring to our program from there?

2. Do you have experience in lifestyle medicine?

Rational and Importance

What is Lifestyle Medicine?

Lifestyle (including diet, physical therapy, sleep, socialization, stress management) focussed evidence based clinical intervention in managing, reversing and prevention of chronic diseases is lifestyle medicine.

Why lifestyle medicine?

Sedentary lifestyle, relentless consumption of sugar, unhealthy diet, variety of stress lead to obesity and chronic diseases. Chronic metabolic diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States. Also, almost all clinical guidelines discuss lifestyle intervention as first intervention in treating such lifestyle related chronic diseases. However, medical school and residency training provides negligible levels of training. There are some programs discussing clinical level lifestyle intervention and some programs discussing food insecurity and disparity in access to quality lifestyle. Much has to be done, though.

Being a trainee physician in the US, you can bridge the gap in many ways. You can develop a lifestyle based continuity clinic where you discuss the role of nutrition with your patients, develop quality improvement projects in patient care outcomes, involve yourself in food insecurity research etc. This will be highly encouraged by the programs not only for academic/clinical purposes but also for the fact that these interventions can generate additional revenue to the hospitals.

On the flip side, it is common for international medical graduates who have been practicing medicine in other countries before applying to residency in the US to have thorough knowledge, research and clinical experience in treating these diseases using lifestyle intervention. You may mention one of those interesting experiences you had and frame your answer connecting what you can do to the patients in the program.

Sample Response

Sample 1: I have been practicing primary care in my country where lifestyle intervention has been a major part. I have written blogs, conducted public health awareness programs. Lifestyle medicine is very fulfilling. Particularly, when you see patients coming out of insulin, reversing PCOS, obesity reversal which increases the quality of life. I have thoroughly enjoyed every patient’s success from boosting their self esteem to increasing their quality of life. As a resident, I look forward to inculcating such lifestyle medicine, both in my inpatient rotation and in ambulatory settings.

Sample 2: I have worked in a pediatric obesity clinic and have seen how these teenage children suffer because of obesity in terms of their self esteem, academics and sleep pattern. That motivated me to learn more about lifestyle intervention. My supervisor Dr.Wilson is huge in lifestyle intervention and I have seen how his patients have gone down in BMI from 40 to 21. I always wanted to be in a program which emphasizes lifestyle as the primary focus and I am glad I got an opportunity to be here interviewing.