Motivational Interviewing in Health Care: Helping Patients Change Behavior

Much of health care today involves helping patients manage conditions whose outcomes can be greatly influenced by lifestyle or behavior change. Written specifically for health care professionals, this concise book presents powerful tools to enhance communication with patients and guide them in making choices to improve their health, from weight loss, exercise, and smoking cessation, to medication adherence and safer sex practices. Engaging dialogues and vignettes bring to life the core skills of motivational interviewing (MI) and show how to incorporate this brief evidence-based approach into any health care setting. Appendices include MI training resources and publications on specific medical conditions.

Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

"I highly recommend this book to directors of clinical services, analysts, therapists of all disciplines, and students. It has survived my usual skepticism for "new" approaches and has inspired me to seek training and supervision in MI."--Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic

Stephen Rollnick, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Health Care Communication in the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Cardiff University, UK. He practiced in a primary care setting for 16 years and then became a teacher and researcher on the subject of communication. Dr. Rollnick has written books on motivational interviewing and health behavior change and has a special interest in challenging consultations in health and social care. He has published widely in scientific journals and has taught practitioners and trainers in many countries throughout the world.

William R. Miller, PhD, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, where he joined the faculty in 1976. He served as Director of Clinical Training for UNM's American Psychological Association-approved doctoral program in clinical psychology and as Codirector of UNM’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions. Dr. Miller’s publications include 35 books and more than 400 articles and chapters. He introduced the concept of motivational interviewing in a 1983 article. The Institute for Scientific Information names him as one of the world's most cited scientists.

Christopher C. Butler, MD, is Professor of Primary Care Medicine and head of the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Cardiff University, UK. He trained in medicine at the University of Cape Town and in clinical epidemiology at the University of Toronto. For his doctoral work, under the direction of Stephen Rollnick, he developed and evaluated behavior change counseling and conducted qualitative research into patients’ perceptions of advice against smoking from clinicians. Dr. Butler has published more than 70 papers, mainly on health behavior change and common infections. He has a general medical practice in a former coal-mining town in south Wales.