Drafting Cardiac Rehabilitation and Lifestyle Counselling Letters

The problem

Lifestyle counselling is central to secondary prevention in cardiology. After a myocardial infarction (MI), patients need clear, written guidance on smoking cessation, dietary change, physical activity, and medication adherence. They have often received verbal advice from several different members of the team. By the time they get home, they are overwhelmed and the specific recommendations blur together.

Written lifestyle guidance makes a real difference to adherence. But producing a personalised letter for each patient — one that reflects their specific situation, their risk factors, and their individual barriers — is time-consuming. The generic leaflet does not always fit.

How AI helps

An AI tool can draft a personalised lifestyle counselling letter from a brief description of the patient's profile and the key areas to address. You specify the patient's situation — what they have been through, their relevant risk factors, and the main lifestyle issues to address. The tool drafts a clear, readable letter. You review, adjust for the individual, and send.

The tool handles the structural challenge of covering multiple lifestyle areas clearly without producing a document that feels like a wall of instructions. It can also calibrate the tone for a patient who is recently frightened by a cardiac event — acknowledging what they have been through before moving to practical advice.

A real example

Dr Carlo is a consultant cardiologist in a post-MI clinic. He is seeing a 55-year-old man, a current smoker, six weeks after a first anterior MI. The patient has already been referred to cardiac rehabilitation and smoking cessation services. Dr Carlo wants to send a written summary of the key lifestyle messages from today's consultation.

He opens an AI tool and types:

Draft a lifestyle counselling letter for a man aged 55, six weeks after 
a first myocardial infarction. He is a current smoker who has been 
referred to smoking cessation. He has been referred to cardiac 
rehabilitation. He works in a sedentary office job.

Cover:
- Smoking cessation — acknowledge he is already engaged with services 
  and reinforce why it matters in his specific situation
- Physical activity — explain what is appropriate at six weeks, 
  the role of cardiac rehabilitation, and gradual progression
- Diet — key principles for cardiac secondary prevention in plain English
- Medication adherence — importance of continuing all prescribed 
  medications consistently
- When to seek urgent help — chest pain, breathlessness, palpitations

Tone: supportive, not lecturing. Acknowledge what he has been through. 
Do not include specific drug names or doses. Maximum 450 words.

The tool produces a letter. Dr Carlo reads it. He adjusts the physical activity section — the tool's guidance is slightly too cautious for six weeks post-MI by his unit's cardiac rehabilitation standard. He adds a sentence acknowledging the patient's specific anxiety about returning to work. He personalises the opening. The letter is ready in ten minutes.

Try it yourself

Things to watch for

Physical activity guidance must reflect your unit's protocol. What is appropriate exercise at two weeks post-MI is very different from six weeks or three months. The tool will produce general guidance. Replace the specifics with your unit's cardiac rehabilitation protocol and the patient's current clinical status.

The tool may oversimplify dietary advice. General principles — reduce saturated fat, eat more vegetables, limit salt — are appropriate for a general lifestyle letter. For patients with specific dietary considerations (renal impairment, diabetes, significant obesity), a more nuanced approach is needed, which you add yourself.

Tone calibration for recently frightened patients requires judgement. The tool can be instructed to be supportive rather than instructional. Read the draft for any sentences that slide into the language of obligation — "you must", "you should" — and soften them where appropriate.

Do not use this as a substitute for referral to specialist services. The lifestyle letter supports referrals to cardiac rehabilitation, dietetics, and smoking cessation — it does not replace them.

Remember: AI is a helpful assistant, not a clinician. You make the call.