How Jeff Stoker is Making a Difference in Healthcare

Dr Jeff Stoker, nominated in the NLP in Healthcare category for the NLP Awards, is a partner in the Bermuda and Marlowe GP Practice in Basingstoke and a Director and founder of Juvenate which provides Healthcare Consultancy, Self Help products and personalised Life and Business Coaching.

Since Jeff trained in NLP he has integrated what he has learned into his own clinical practice to create change and results in his patients, as well as training his admin staff and receptionists in NLP techniques to engage and communicate better with patients.

Jeff shares his leaning and techniques widely amongst his fellow professionals in the NHS. In one example, he trains other professionals to help coach patients out of their problem mindset and into a more resourceful state to be used in a standard GP clinical consultation working through 9 alternatives when they hear a ‘can’t’ statement from a patient. He has also developed an NLP based model for Grief counselling using sub-modalities to help bereaved patients navigate a difficult phase of life. To support his work with other Health Service professionals, Jeff recently studied for a PGCE for which he wrote a paper on the use of coaching and mentoring as an adjunct to traditional medical training.

A successful pitch for a very large innovation grant from SBRI Healthcare for an exciting project promoting self-care in patients was supported by his use of NLP presentation skills. He sits on the locality ‘Self-Care’ leadership group for his CCG, as he believes the only way the NHS can be sustained and transformed is to ‘help patients help themselves’ and he sees NLP as a catalyst to nudge patients to make the changes they really need to make.

As a measure of the success of his activity, his organisation has continued to thrive in a difficult NHS environment and he has taken on the ‘violent patient’ contract for his locality, seeing the patients other practices in his area have rejected. He trains other doctors on advanced communication skills to be capable of doing the same. Jeff is managing partner in a GP practice of over 13000 patients that he has turned around from what was once the worst GP practice in Hampshire into a centre for innovation and a training practice, he also runs a medical research unit from the practice.

He has chosen to work in an area with high unemployment and deprivation where he has the unique opportunity to help others daily and can talk at length about how he has used NLP techniques in real life situations. He has spoken nationally in front of his peers (using NLP presentation skills) about how he does what he does.

Jeff shares his techniques, and learnings freely with others on his popular website juvenate.org.

His methodology and integration of NLP techniques into traditional practice whilst also training others to do the same has helped to make a difference by creating real change in patients.

The NLP Awards shortlists have been put together from nominations by an independent judging panel. The International NLP Conference takes place on Friday to Sunday 18th – 20th May at the Park Inn by Radisson at Heathrow, London.

The NLP Awards will be presented at a Gala Dinner on Saturday 19th May at the same location. More details of the categories and shortlisted nominees can be found here.