Motivational Interviewing in Health Care: Helping Patients Change Behavior

This indispensable book is the definitive guide to motivational interviewing (MI) for health care practitioners.

When it comes to helping patients manage chronic and acute conditions and make healthier choices in such areas as medication adherence, smoking, diet, and preventive care, good advice alone is not enough. By using MI techniques, doctors, nurses, and other providers can transform conversations about change. The book shows how even the briefest clinical interaction can serve to build trust, clarify patients' goals as well as reasons for ambivalence, and guide them to take positive steps. Vivid sample dialogues, engagingly read by multiple narrators, illustrate ways to incorporate this evidence-based approach into diverse health care settings.

Also included are practical tips, sample scripts, "Try This" activities, and reflections on using MI from practitioners in a range of contexts. The second edition has been restructured around the four-process model of MI (engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning) and incorporates lessons learned from the authors' ongoing clinical practice and practitioner training workshops. This title is in the Applications of Motivational Interviewing series, edited by Stephen Rollnick, William R. Miller, and Theresa B. Moyers.