Motivational Interviewing Skills for Frontline Clinicians

Webinar Overview

Motivational Interviewing (MI) has proven to be a simple but powerful technique for planting the seeds of behavior change in even the most resistant patients with some of the most challenging problems. Originally designed for substance use disorder, smoking cessation, and other forms of behavioral and psychological addiction, MI has since been adapted, very effectively, for other forms of treatment resistance — particularly for adolescents with behavioral health disorders. Jason Fogler, PhD, a Senior Psychologist in the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, will take you through his pragmatic and principled method for quickly establishing rapport with treatment-resistant youth and then using MI to "keep the lines of communication open" about considering and then implementing plans for behavior change. 

Who Should Attend

• Psychologists
• Physician Assistants
• Nurses
• Primary Care Physicians
• Specialty Physicians
• Others

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate adolescent patients' readiness for change based on what they say and how they say it, thereby helping you to set expectations and "pace" your conversation about behavioral change over one or several sessions. 
• Apply the MI techniques of subjective anchoring, "rolling with resistance", and "playing Devil's advocate" to keep the conversation going about the possibility, and ultimately execution, of positive behavior change.   
• Adapt to patients' change talk, indicating their interest in behavior change, and sustain talk, the internalized beliefs and sometimes hopelessness that keep people stuck in old, unproductive (but familiar) patterns...and ultimately learn how to selectively reinforce or ignore these kinds of speech patterns for better results