Real Behavior Change in Primary Care: Improving Patient Outcomes and Increasing Job Satisfaction

A Toolkit for Creating Lasting Behavior Change in Your PatientsAs a primary care provider, you are on the front lines of medical treatment. Oftentimes, you're the first medical professional patients come to when they experience problems with their health. While some of these problems can be resolved by traditional medical treatment, many others are driven by underlying psychological issues and unhealthy lifestyle choices that you may feel powerless to affect. Between repeat patient visits and the frustrating progression of preventable symptoms and conditions, it's no wonder so many medical and behavioral health providers feel burned out and at a loss for effective solutions.This guide was designed to help you find those solutions and recapture the ability to effectively help patients achieve optimal health and happiness. Real Behavior Change in Primary Care offers ten-minute interventions that provide your patients with the tools they need to change unworkable and unhealthy behaviors. Each short yet powerful intervention utilizes empirically supported skills from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, to help you empower patients to take charge of the psychological blocks that keep them from resolving their health problems. You'll also apply ACT skills to your own life and learn to better manage stress, recover from burnout, and rediscover the meaning behind your work as a health care provider.Help patients suffering with:Chronic disease Alcohol and substance abuse Chronic pain Anxiety and depression Trauma and abuse

About the Author

Patricia J. Robinson, PhD, is a trainer and consultant for Mountainview Consulting Group. She is widely recognized for pioneering new approaches to mental health care, and is recipient of the Primary Care Luminary Award (2025) and the Cummings Foundation PSYCHE Award (2026). Robinson is cofounder of FACT, and the primary care behavioral health model. She has authored and coauthored numerous articles, book chapters, and fourteen books, including Behavioral Consultation and Primary Care and The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression. Patricia lives in the Willamette Valley with her partner and their pups, Mac and Molly. Debra A. Gould, MD, MPH, is associate clinical professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has practiced family medicine and taught medical students and family medicine residents for more than seventeen years. Her interests include evidence-based practice, mental health issues in primary care, community medicine, practice-based research, and physician wellness. Kirk D. Strosahl, PhD is cofounder, along with Steven C. Hayes and Kelly Wilson, of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and along with Patricia Robinson, codeveloped the focused ACT brief intervention approach. Strosahl practiced as a psychologist for nearly thirty-five years in various brief therapy settings, including primary care, medical-surgical wards, and brief therapy clinics. He has authored several books articulating brief applications of the ACT model, and has offered countless clinical trainings, workshops and webinars on the focused acceptance and commitment therapy (FACT) approach over the years. His clinician-oriented, practical approach has led him to be called the “hands of ACT.”