“I find a lot of people just want someone to have a nice bedside manner, but they don’t really want them to tell them how to improve their health!”
I don’t think there has to be a contradiction between good beside manner and improving health. Sometimes a slight change in wording can give the same message but leave the patient feeling positive and motivated to keep working. If instead of saying, “Good job, but you really should only weigh 140. Keep trying!” you would say, “Great job! I bet if you continue this way, you’ll soon reach your goal weight of 140 lbs.”, the patient would be a lot happier and be much more motivated to keep trying. If I were the patient and you told it to me your way, I would probably say “Why bother–all my hard work and he’s still not happy with me.” Bedside manner is a lot like parenting in that sense.