Preparing Students for Their Role in Eliciting Behavior Change: Motivational Interviewing in Interprofessional Team-based Care

Background:

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based process for eliciting behavior change and is taught across health professions. In practice, promoting health behavior change is the responsibility of many members of the care team. Preparing students for collaborative MI requires that they have an understanding of their own and others’ roles/responsibilities and that they are able to communicate effectively with patients, families, and other professionals.

Design:

Faculty from pharmacy and social work designed a two-hour workshop to help students from various health professions prepare for their role in eliciting behavior change as part of an interprofessional team. The learning experience consists of a pre-reading assignment and interactive exercises. During the workshop, students are tested on their comprehension of MI concepts presented in the pre-work. Faculty share two videos focused on a Latina patient with Type 2 diabetes. The first version illustrates a provider-centric encounter; the second demonstrates a patient-centered, culturally sensitive interprofessional collaboration using MI. Interprofessional groups of students discuss the videos and their profession’s role in eliciting behavior change, then role-play two scenarios to practice implementing MI techniques. Students were surveyed following the event to obtain feedback on completion of the learning objectives and positive and constructive comments.

Results:

This learning experience has been delivered 5 times over 4 semesters to 373 pharmacy, 35 social work, 24 medical dietetics, 59 occupational therapy, 9 physical therapy, and 19 undergraduate health sciences students. Data from student surveys will be shared.

Conclusion:

Eliciting behavior change is a responsibility of many health professions and thus an essential topic for healthcare students to study, making it an excellent content area for IPE. Utilizing videos to generate discussion and demonstrate how members of an IP team collaborate to support behavior change with patient-centered, MI techniques was a successful approach. Students were able to reflect on and practice MI skills that can be useful to them immediately during their clinical internships.

Reflections:

Student input was valuable in shaping the learning experience over time. Faculty were cognizant of how the session needed to be delivered in order for students to be able to connect with the videos that were presented. Pharmacy students overwhelmingly expressed wanting more exposure to other disciplines, which led to an expanded representation of faculty and students in the most recent offering. Connecting with faculty who were able to incorporate the activity into a required course helped ensure representation from more disciplines.