Motivational Interviewing for Social Care Navigators
Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center
MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING
The Need | Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center is a federally qualified health center serving more than 47,000 people with a team of more than 600 employees. In service of their mission to provide high quality, whole-person care, Virginia Garcia maintains a large team of social care navigators, who support patients with complex health and social circumstances. Leaders wanted to provide the team with motivational interviewing (MI) training to expand their toolbox for creating engaging and effective partnership with patients.
The Approach | Ariel collaborated with the Training and Development team to develop an MI learning plan for the navigators. We offered in-person introductory training, followed by 6 sessions of virtual skill-building support.
The Outcomes | Navigators learned motivational interviewing concepts and skills for partnering with patients to enhance motivation and facilitate change. We discussed and practiced key skills in-depth, and also explored when MI is most helpful and appropriate in social care conversations.
The Learnings | It is always humbling and inspiring to spend time with teams doing their daily work in close partnership with patients living with complex circumstances. Being a social care navigator requires:
Significant interpersonal and emotional skills
Knowledge of complex health and social service systems
Capacity to provide culturally responsive care
The Virginia Garcia navigators are a very capable team of professionals and it was a privilege to help them build up their MI toolbox.
