Original ArticleTeaching Motivational Interviewing to First-Year Medical Students to Improve Counseling Skills in Health Behavior Change
Section snippets
SUBJECTS AND METHODS
The Health Behavior Change Counseling course was designed to begin with a short didactic presentation followed by interactive learning techniques, such as group exercises and role-plays, used to build and refine MI skills. The entire first-year Mayo Medical School class (42 students) participated in the Health Behavior Change Counseling course in the spring of 2002. The course, which consisted of 5 two-hour sessions, was held toward the end of the first academic year in conjunction with the
RESULTS
Of the 42 first-year medical students who participated in the course, 6 did not complete the postcourse questionnaire. We summarized and compared the precourse to postcourse changes in item responses for the students who completed the questionnaire at both time points.
Each of the 8 confidence items were compared before and after the course using a signed rank test. All of the 5 response categories were included in this test. Response categories were coded 1 to 5 for “very not confident” to
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of MI counseling skills training on medical students’ ratings of confidence in and knowledge of health behavior change strategies. We found that participation in 5 small group sessions that used didactic teaching, role-play with simulated patients, and direct faculty feedback significantly improved medical students’ self-reported confidence level in providing counseling to patients and significantly improved their knowledge of MI counseling
CONCLUSION
Participation in the Health Behavior Change Counseling course significantly improved first-year medical students’ confidence in and understanding of MI counseling techniques. We hope that our students’ newly acquired communication skills will translate into patient health behavior change and ultimately disease prevention.
REFERENCES (15)
- et al.
Health promotion practices among physicians
Am J Prev Med
(1996) - et al.
Medical students' readiness to provide lifestyle counseling for overweight patients
Eating Behav
(2002) - et al.
Motivational interviewing in health care settings: opportunities and limitations
Am J Prev Med
(2001) - et al.
Relationship between low cardiorespiratory fitness and mortality in normal-weight, overweight, and obese men
JAMA
(1999) - et al.
Physician counseling about exercise
JAMA
(1999) - et al.
Are health care professionals advising obese patients to lose weight?
JAMA
(1999) Motivational interviewing with problem drinkers
Behav Psychother
(1983)
Cited by (86)
Teaching brief motivational interviewing to medical students using a pedagogical framework
2022, Patient Education and CounselingWhat do we know about written assessment of health professionals’ communication skills? A scoping review
2022, Patient Education and CounselingCitation Excerpt :The most frequently reported methodology used for instrument scoring was the involvement of a group of authors/teachers (n = 15), the involvement of experts (n = 10) or the use of theoretical frameworks, guidelines or models (n = 11). The feasibility of the scoring methodology or the administration of the instrument was rarely mentioned [51,57,62,76,84,86,95,97,120]. Most authors used context-rich stimuli, with videos used as often as written vignettes (Fig. 2).
Psychological assessment and motivational interviewing of patients seeking bariatric and metabolic endoscopic therapies
2020, Techniques and Innovations in Gastrointestinal EndoscopyA communications module to reinforce motivational interviewing concepts
2019, Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and LearningMotivational interviewing training for physiotherapy and occupational therapy students: Effect on confidence, knowledge and skills
2019, Patient Education and CounselingCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, existing studies that demonstrate improved knowledge post-training have utilised self-designed multiple-choice questionnaires limiting comparability with the present cohort [23,38]. Consistent with previous research a positive effect of training on confidence was observed [17,19,23,24,27,39,40]. Confidence in counselling skills is a significant predictor of future utilisation [41], however these findings should be interpreted cautiously as disparities often exist between clinician self-rated skill and the quality of observed practice [42–47].
“A change would do you good”: Training medical students in Motivational Interviewing using a blended-learning approach – A pilot evaluation
2019, Patient Education and CounselingCitation Excerpt :After training, students considered MI an important skill for physicians to have [39] and an effective way to help patients change their health-related behavior [41] in a desired direction. These studies have also reported a stronger belief in the importance of behavior-change counseling in students [38,43]. So far, published MI curricula for medical students use lectures and small groups as a teaching format; to our knowledge, no curriculum uses video-learning (e-learning) or blended learning.
This work was funded in part from grant R25 CA86421 from the National Cancer Institute.