Life Coaching: A Method for Enhancing Patients’ Emancipation

This paper presents a case study conducted as part of a PhD Thesis on testing Life Coaching as a learning method for fostering emancipation in vulnerable groups (adult patients), using a participatory-action-research approach. The lessons learnt provides empirical insights on the implications for the implementation of non-medical methods that could allow a shift from a situation of passivity (patient care) to a new one of participation to the definition of new objectives or projects of life (active citizenship). This paper was conceived to fulfil an identified need to study and test innovative and non-medical methods for fostering adult patients’ self-determination.