Does the person know what to do? What are the barriers? What are the goals and where are they in trying to reach those goals? What are some possible steps to take to try to reach those goals – try to get the person to name some possible steps. 

Counseling assignment

Counsel a family member or a friend.  Try to choose someone who really has a nutrition issue – and most of us have some issue – even if it is a preventative issue – such as the person uses too much salt – no hypertension diagnosed, but you’d like to prevent it in the future.  But you should explain that this is an assignment, and that that person is really helping you complete your assignment.  You are acting like a professional nutritional counselor, as if you were working with someone you don’t actually know.

Use a PES counseling form and fill in as much as you can (but you shouldn’t write out the person’s name).  Do a 24-hour recall with the person as part of the counseling session.

You can put together a few questions to begin, but you can’t anticipate what the answers will be, so you can’t know ahead of time all of the questions you will use or comments you will make.

You should try to use open-ended questions.  You should try to be non-judgmental.

You should try to identify what state of change that person is in.

Since you know the person already, see if you can find out more about that person’s nutrition issue than you knew before.  Try to draw out the information in a non-judgmental, respectful way.  Ideally, in your asking, the person might gain some insight into his/her own self as that relates to the nutrition issue, that wasn’t realized before.

Does the person know what to do?  What are the barriers?  What are the goals and where are they in trying to reach those goals?  What are some possible steps to take to try to reach those goals – try to get the person to name some possible steps.  Or, come up with a few possibilities for the person to choose from – if the person seems receptive and is in that change stage.  Once you come up with one or 2 suggestions, make them into SMART goals.

Write up ideas for getting the person to the next level in the stages of change.  Write up what you might want to work on if you continued to counsel that person.

You should submit the filled in PES form and the 24-hour recall plus some written analysis of the counseling session– how did it go?  Answer some of the questions above.  You can also use the Client Assessment Questionnaire if you want, although if you know this person already, you may know most of the answers so you might not find it necessary to use this form.