TPC Journal V7, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 2 111 during this session. As a result, a spontaneous sharing of how nurses deal with the grief of losing patients occurred. Amelia shared that she had recently decided to join Team in Training for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and train for a half marathon in memory of one of her younger patients. She stated that letting the family know and beginning to raise money for research in this area was helping her to positively channel her grief. As a result of this discussion, several of the nurses stated that they left the group with hope, connectivity, and ideas for channeling their grief and stress. The final session of the group focused on closure. Amelia shared that although she was initially dubious about the group, as a result of her sharing and the small changes she was making with her snacking, she was not feeling as “blah” anymore. Polly also shared that while she had not lost weight yet, she felt more motivated to continue walking and noticed that she felt more positive about walking. Conclusion Changes in health care have increased job opportunities in health care for counselors. The PPACA allows counselors the opportunity to expand their background of wellness while capitalizing on preventive health care initiatives (Barden, Conley, & Young, 2015; Granello & Witmer, 2013). With the interrelatedness between physical and mental health, counselors are ideally positioned to help clients achieve their wellness goals. Connections between physical activity and psychological well- being are well established, as are the potential benefits of improved coping with stress and adversity (Focht & Lewis, 2013). Because chronic stress has been shown to contribute to obesity and metabolic diseases (Razzoli & Bartolomucci, 2016), helping employees improve their coping skills can lead to adaptive ways of dealing with stress, which ultimately impacts chronic health conditions. To better manage occupational stress, counselors can fill the need for bringing stress management skills to the workplace (Galla et al., 2015). In addition, wellness programs provide the ability for counselors to research their contributions to workplace wellness programs, thereby providing an opportunity to study counselor effectiveness. Research has shown that using health care professionals in disease management portions of wellness programs can lower costs. The focus of this manuscript has been to describe a framework for counselors to facilitate lifestyle management programs in corporate settings. Considerable sponsored research opportunities also are available, especially for worksite wellness programs targeted to underserved populations (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, 2016). Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript. References American Psychological Association. (2016). Coping with stress at work . Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ helpcenter/work-stress.aspx Anderko, L., Roffenbender, J. S., Goetzel, R. Z., Millard, F., Wildenhaus, K., DeSantis, C., & Novelli, W. (2012). Promoting prevention through the Affordable Care Act: Workplace wellness. Preventing Chronic Disease: