If you’re trained in healthcare, you’re usually expected to have the answers. That’s useful in an emergency situation, or with a bodily fix-it like a broken bone. But if you’re working with patients on behavior -lifestyle change, what the patient DOES, eats, etc. - if what you’re talking about requires the patient to make a change in their life, the usual prescribing/telling/educating isn’t terribly effective. In fact, 2-3% of the time, they’ll do what you tell them. But most of the time when we try to persuade someone, they’ll argue for the other side! You can expect they’ll come back with why that won’t work or why they don’t want to do that. As you cause them to say why they don’t want to, why it’s too hard, they are literally hearing themselves argue against change. They are either talking themselves into change or talking themselves out of it. Want to learn more about how you can play a role in your patients making a change?

MI can help healthcare professionals who are low on time quickly guide patients toward behavior change, in a patient-driven way, alleviating the pressure to know-all and fix-all. MI aims to help patients take control of their health behaviors, which in turn can reduce health practitioner strain and burnout, and moving the practitioner back to greater job satisfaction. “MI holds the promise of patients taking greater changer of their own health and utilizing healthcare less” -Rollnick.

Short answer, yes. There are over 2,000 clinical trials for MI, and over 1,200 of those demonstrating the profound power of MI in health behavior change.