🩺 For Practice · Practice idea
👥 Lifestyle Medicine Shared Medical Appointments
A nurse’s guide to free, ready-made curricula: the Full Plate Living Shared Medical Appointment Program from Ardmore Institute of Health for nutrition, paired with The Lift Project for mental wellbeing.
❓ Why group visits, and why nurses
Lifestyle change takes more time, teaching, and support than a 15-minute visit allows. A shared medical appointment is a clinic visit delivered in a group: each patient receives individual clinical attention, while education and peer support happen together. The model draws on social cognitive theory and the Chronic Care Model, and nurse practitioners already lead shared medical appointments in primary care, including a published nurse practitioner–led diabetes shared medical appointment in the Veterans Affairs Loma Linda Healthcare System.
🩺 Nursing brings exactly what group care needs: teaching, coaching, facilitation, assessment, care coordination, and knowing each person as a whole human being. It fits the Flourishing Nursing question: what conditions make flourishing more possible, for patients and for the team?
📚 Free, ready-made curricula
🥗 Full Plate Living (Ardmore Institute of Health)
📋 Shared Medical Appointment Program: 1-, 4-, and 8-session versions with scripts and slide decks, in English and Spanish (Citas Médicas Compartidas). Ardmore states the program is free and can be delivered and billed in person or virtually.
👥 Group Program: free, scripted 8-session curriculum for non-billable community, workplace, or clinic groups, in English and Spanish.
🎓 Facilitator training: free seven-module certification for leading the Group or Shared Medical Appointment program.
📜 Continuing medical education: free courses on implementing shared medical appointments with Full Plate Living and on glucagon-like peptide-1 prescribing in the context of lifestyle medicine.
🍲 Patients: free self-paced Core Program, recipes, and online community for between sessions.
🧠 The Lift Project (Dr. Darren Morton)
A mental wellbeing program combining lifestyle medicine, positive psychology, and neuroscience, used in health care, workplace, education, and community settings and delivered to small groups by endorsed providers. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine offered it to its members as “caring for the carers.” Ardmore announced free Lift access for Full Plate Living members in 2025; confirm whether that offer is current.
🤝 Ways to pair it with a shared medical appointment: invite participants to take one Lift lesson between sessions, open each session with a two-minute “what lifted you this week?” round, or run Lift as a parallel staff-wellbeing cohort for the care team.
📜 Shared medical appointment continuing medical education credit update — October 16, 2026: Full Plate Living’s registration page lists its free Implementing Shared Medical Appointments Utilizing Full Plate Living course with up to 2.00 American Academy of Family Physicians Prescribed credits for the approval term June 12, 2026–June 12, 2027. Registration is required. Confirm your profession’s eligibility and credit acceptance with the provider and your licensing board before enrolling.
🤝 Who does what: roles within scope
| Team member | Possible roles |
|---|---|
| 🧑⚕️ Nurse practitioner / advanced practice registered nurse | Leads the billable shared medical appointment where state law, payer rules, and organizational policy allow; individual assessment, medication review and adjustment, plan of care, documentation |
| 🩺 Registered nurse | Teaching, facilitation, coaching, vital signs and screening review, protocols-based follow-up, care coordination |
| 🤲 Licensed practical nurse / licensed vocational nurse, certified nursing assistant, medical assistant | Room setup, check-in, vital signs, supplies, reminders, and welcoming, each within scope and supervision |
| 🥗 Registered dietitian | Medical nutrition therapy and individualized nutrition plans |
| 💬 Behavioral health clinician | Mental-health screening follow-up, therapy, and crisis response |
| 🏘️ Community health worker / peer | Recruitment, transportation, food-access and social-needs navigation, and belonging |
✅ A pilot checklist
☐ Leadership support and a named clinical lead
☐ Choose a curriculum and session length (1, 4, or 8)
☐ Complete the free facilitator training and continuing medical education
☐ Confirm billing, coding, and who may bill with compliance and payers
☐ Configure the electronic health record to document group-based encounters and individual vitals and notes
☐ Write privacy and confidentiality policies, including a group confidentiality agreement
☐ Pick a regular, accessible, private space (or a secure virtual platform)
☐ Train support staff for recruitment, reminders, transportation, room setup, and supplies
☐ Plan medication-safety follow-up for patients on glucose- and blood-pressure-lowering drugs
☐ Decide what you’ll measure (attendance, patient experience, clinical measures) and how you’ll share results
☐ Invite interpreters and Spanish-language materials where needed
☐ Care for the team: consider a Lift cohort for staff too
Adapted from common shared medical appointment implementation guidance, including Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy group-visit component and the Duke Personalized Health Planning shared medical appointment manual. This is a planning aid, not legal, billing, or compliance advice.
🔬 Evidence and further reading
- 📄 Lacagnina S, Tips J, Pauly K, Cara K, Karlsen M. Lifestyle medicine shared medical appointments. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2021.
- 📄 Using shared medical appointments in your practice. J Nurse Pract. 2023.
- 📄 Morton DP, Renfrew M, Matthews S. The ACLM’s offering of a mental health and wellbeing program (The Lift Project) to its members: caring for the carers. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2024.
- 📄 Shared medical appointments for chronic medical conditions: evidence synthesis. United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Health Services Research and Development.
- 📄 Full Plate Living bibliography.
⚖️ Evidence for shared medical appointments is promising but mixed across conditions and settings; many program evaluations rely on participant surveys without control groups. Pairing Full Plate Living with The Lift Project is a Flourishing Nursing practice idea, not a studied combined intervention.
🍲 For patients and families: send people to the plain-language version on Kitchen Monk, with step-by-step buttons and a 10-week pacing path.
📚 Scripture for learners
“The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.”
Proverbs 18:15 · KJV
🌿 Nathanael’s reflection: Learning is a way of caring. Every course, article, and conversation can help us serve people more wisely. Use what you learn with humility and within your professional role.
ℹ️ PRACTICE IDEA · Independent resources. Ardmore Institute of Health, Full Plate Living, The Lift Project, Dr. Darren Morton, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Duke, and the Department of Veterans Affairs are independent; none sponsors, endorses, reviewed, or is affiliated with Flourishing Nursing, and no payment is received. Program details were checked against public websites in September 2026 and may change. Educational content only; not legal, billing, or clinical advice, and nothing here changes any nurse’s scope of practice. Written by Flourishing Nurse Ninja Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM, with artificial intelligence-assisted drafting; no independent review completed yet. Last updated: October 2, 2026.
“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” 
