In Session: Practicing Clinical Skills in Motivational Interviewing

Course overview

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a style of communication that promotes collaboration with clients. It aims to strengthen a client's motivation by eliciting their reasons for change. Conversations about change may be difficult. However, demonstrating empathy and collaborating with clients improves client engagement (Marcovitz & Suzuki, 2022). It is a client-centered counseling style that focuses on eliciting behavioral change by helping clients resolve their ambivalence. Although MI started as an intervention to treat substance use disorders, it is now used for a wide range of challenges. MI skills are transferrable to any situation (Miller & Rollnick, 2012). MI can be used in a variety of healthcare settings including primary care, dental care, oncology, emergency department, and outpatient settings, among others (Wade et al., 2018; Larsen et al., 2021; Colvara et al., 2018; Leske et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2020). This course will provide you with an opportunity to apply your existing knowledge of how to use MI skills with a client, Marisol. By interacting with her in a simulated therapy session, you will see how your selection of responses impacts her level of engagement and movement toward change. Supervisory input will also help guide you through this simulation exercise. If you have not participated in any in-depth training on MI, we recommend that you first review the other courses on this topic in the Relias library. After learning about MI in more detail, you can then use this simulation to reinforce your knowledge. The goal of this course is to provide addictions, behavioral health counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and social work professionals in health and human services settings with an opportunity to apply their existing knowledge of Motivational Interviewing in clinical practice. Note: As you proceed through this practice opportunity, bear in mind that due to time constraints, this course presents an abbreviated version of what an MI session could look like.