Fidelity and maintenance of motivational interviewing skills in diabetes prevention program coaches: a pilot study

ABSTRACT

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective counseling style for changing lifestyle behaviors. The purpose of this study was to pilot a brief MI workshop on non-healthcare practitioners to deliver a community-based diabetes prevention program. Participants (n = 5) attended a two-day MI workshop, shadowed an expert coach delivering the diabetes prevention program, and finally, were shadowed by the expert coach and received feedback. Participants pre- and post-workshop MI skills were assessed, participants’ satisfaction with the workshop was recorded, and their delivery of the program using MI was assessed using a random selection of participants’ audio recordings of interactions with client. The primary outcome was whether coaches were able to maintain a level of client-centered MI skills for the six months post-training, as assessed by the Motivational Interviewing Competency Assessment (MICA). One session with one client per month for coaches’ first six months post-training was coded. Counseling scores were generated using the MICA. In general, coaches showed improvements from pre- to post-workshop, were satisfied with the training, and were using client-centered care over the six-month study period. The majority (80%) of all sessions were client-centered for all the MICA categories. This pilot study offers preliminary evidence that non-healthcare practitioners attending a brief MI training were able to deliver client-centered coaching in a community-based diabetes prevention program up to six months post-training without the use of any booster training sessions. This suggests that the training used within this study may be sufficient to train future non-healthcare practitioner diabetes prevention program coaches in the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient-centered care
• pilot study
• health promotion
• counseling
• prediabetic state

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval was obtained from the University of British Columbia Clinical Research Ethics Board (H16–02028). Before participating in the training, participants provided written consent to participate in the study and have their sessions with clients audio-recorded. Small Steps for Big Changes clients also consented to having their sessions audio-recorded.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets analysed during the current study are not publicly available because the dataset contains audio recordings and transcripts of coach-client interactions in which identifying and personal information is provided. Blinded transcripts could be made available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2022.2136976

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a CIHR Foundation Grant (#333266); and a Michael Smith Foundation Health Research Scholar Award (#5917).