Improving patient-centered care and professional competence through motivational interviewing

For the past 50 years, researchers, such as Parsons (1951) and Roter, Frankel, Hall, and Sluyter (2006) have investigated medical interactions between the health care provider (HCP) and patient. Their studies were conducted in an effort to understand the nature of providers’ communication styles and enhance patient outcomes. One of the methodologies by which such interactions have been evaluated is through Motivational Interviewing (MI). MI  facilitates and engages intrinsic motivation within the patient in order to change behavior through goal-oriented, patient-centered counseling (Rollnick & Miller, 1991).

Innovative trends in the allied health service delivery model are imperative to meet the ever-changing healthcare systems processes and patient treatment outcome metrics.  In collaboration with Cook Children’s Medical Center (CCMC), this program plan and intervention was developed as a MI professional competency training.  Allied health professionals were trained to effectively implement MI in concert with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act within their scope of practice when providing the health education plan (HEP) in the patients’ plan of care (POC).

A multi-modal, didactic MI training program was implemented in CCMCs Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation department.  Allied health professionals were introduced to MI behavioral counseling. As an additional component, HCPs were trained to address treatment compliance and adherence within the POC for patients and their families, whose communicative impairment ICD-10 code is a secondary diagnosis.  HCPs were also given evidence-based templates to document client-centered and patient-reported, baseline and continuous data to monitor treatment adherence and compliance.

The purpose of this presentation is to explain the MI professional training program, to include a smartphone compliant MI application, developed to increase HCP training frequency, intensity and competency in delivering HEP during the patient/family encounter.