A 2-hour online course

Course Summary

This is a 2-hour, fully online course, which you can take from the comfort of your home.

Introduction

Although it is well known that changing unhelpful health behaviours will improve people’s health and reduce their risk of disease, starting and keeping up long-term behaviour change is extremely difficult. People may have mixed feelings about changing their behaviour in the first place and once they do start to change they often lose motivation during the process. Health professionals are in a strategic position to influence and facilitate motivation and change. Despite this, they are not traditionally trained in the use of motivational strategies for behaviour change. This course provides an opportunity to learn more about motivation and explore its application in practice.

Course Aim

To increase knowledge of motivational interviewing, and to practice some of the skills and strategies involved.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course participants should be able to:

• Define motivation and motivational interviewing.
• Describe the principles underlying this approach.
• Identify the skills and strategies required to use motivational interviewing.
• Demonstrate key skills required to use this approach.
• Acknowledge the complexities of influencing motivation.
• Explore the application of motivational interviewing in practice.

Prerequisites

Participants will find it beneficial to have completed Behaviour Change Skills Part 1 prior to starting this course.

Topics

• Define motivation and motivational interviewing.
• 4 Key Processes in
• The evidence for this way of working.
• Key skills: Reflective Listening Skills
• Key strategies: Explore ‘Readiness’, Explore Ambivalence, Typical Day, Exchanging Information, Help with Decision Making, Goal Setting
• Integration into practice

Teaching Methods

You will learn through audio and video, interactive e-learning units and presentations, a quiz and reflective exercises. You will be able to download the course content as PDFs.

Suitability

This course is suitable for professionals working in healthcare, including: doctors, nurses, dietitians, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, non-clinical practitioners and all those helping people to change.