Giving residents tools to talk about behavior change: a motivational interviewing curriculum description and evaluation.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether a motivational interviewing (MI) curriculum is effective in teaching internal medicine residents core MI skills and the empathic, nonjudgmental MI style.


METHODS
Nineteen third-year residents met for 12 h with a faculty instructor. Teaching methods included lecture, written exercises, a simulated patient exercise, and discussion of residents' behavior change issues.


RESULTS
Residents' adoption of MI skills was evaluated before and after the course with the Helpful Responses Questionnaire. Residents decreased use of closed-ended questions (from a score of 1.13 to 0.37, p=0.036) and MI roadblocks (4.00-1.08, p<0.001), and increased the use of reflections (1.87-4.87, p<0.001), and use of MI strategies (0.45-0.97, p=0.017). Residents' use of open-ended questions decreased from 1.97 to a mean of 1.05, p=0.023. Residents' ratings of the course on a 5-point scale varied from 3.7 for written exercises to 4.6/5 for the simulated patient exercise. After the course, residents rated behavior change counseling skills as more important.


CONCLUSIONS
A 12-h course increased residents' use of core MI communication skills in a written measure, and was highly rated.


CONCLUSIONS
Future work should examine whether teaching of the empathic, collaborative MI stance impacts patient outcomes.
Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. childersjw2@upmc.edu
Julie W
JW
Childers
James E
JE
Bost
Kevin L
KL
Kraemer
Patricia A
PA
Cluss
Carla L
CL
Spagnoletti
Alda Maria R
AM
Gonzaga
Robert M
RM
Arnold
D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003142:Communication; D003479:Curriculum; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education*; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D062405:Motivational Interviewing; D016544:Patient Simulation; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult