Motivational Interviewing

Change is hard. Motivational interviewing can help.

Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based method for helping people change and grow.

Motivational interviewing promotes respectful, responsive dialogue with people from many different backgrounds.

From health promotion to organizational leadership, motivational interviewing generates effective and engaging conversations that help people get unstuck and embrace change.

Motivational interviewing is:

  • Effective in helping diverse people change many different health-related behaviors

  • Accessible to professionals with a wide range of backgrounds and credentials

We help health professionals learn how to use motivational interviewing to deliver effective, person-centered care.

We strive to make learning motivational interviewing accessible and fun.

We offer motivational interviewing training for physical, behavioral, oral, and social health professionals who want to improve health outcomes through partnering with patients and families.

We can help your teams:

  • Get started with learning motivational interviewing

  • Build skills to be more effective

  • Strengthen your organization’s approach to patient engagement

  • Use evidence-based practice to improve health outcomes

Our approach to training is highly interactive and uses many kinds of learning formats for engaging diverse learners.

We offer:

  • In-person and virtual training

  • Motivational Interviewing Competency Assessment coding and coaching

  • Support for developing organizational learning plans and systems

Participant Experiences

“I learned so much from this class! The instructor was very engaging and I felt comfortable asking questions. The role plays ended up being my favorite part, even though that’s what I was most nervous about!”
“I enjoyed how interactive it was, I was able to put the skills into practice with supportive and thoughtful feedback.”
“Ariel is great, easy to connect with and she had an openness to learning our specific needs.”

Read about how we’ve supported organizations with Motivational Interviewing.

Projects
Motivational Interviewing for Social Care Navigators
Motivational Interviewing for Social Care Navigators

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. Virginia Garcia maintains a large team of social care navigators, who support patients with complex health and social circumstances.  Ariel collaborated with the Training and Development team to develop an MI learning plan for the navigators, including both in-person and virtual support.

Motivational Interviewing Learning Series
Motivational Interviewing Learning Series

Mosaic Community Health is a federally qualified health center in central Oregon that serves almost 30,000 patients a year with a staff of 400 people. Ariel partnered with the Training and Development team to develop a motivational interviewing training plan for a multidisciplinary audience.  We offered both beginner and intermediate training so that team members could get an introduction to motivational interviewing, and deepen their skills if they were interested.

Motivational Interviewing Videos for PCA Learning Management System
Motivational Interviewing Videos for PCA Learning Management System

The Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) is New York's Primary Care Association, a membership organization representing New York’s 70-plus community health centers. Ariel created a series of motivational interviewing training videos for CHCANYS to distribute through their Learning Management System for community health workers at New York health centers to watch and learn about MI at their own convenience. 

About Your Facilitator

Ariel learned motivational interviewing while working as a health coach at the Oregon Health & Science University. She joined the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers in 2013 and has provided motivational interviewing training and coaching to hundreds of health professionals from a variety of disciplines.

As a trainer, Ariel uses principles of popular and adult education, communication design, and an emphasis on interaction and skill-building to help learners build knowledge and skills. Ariel is passionate about sharing the transformative power of motivational interviewing as a relational, person-centered, and evidence-based approach to promoting change.

Motivational Interviewing Resources

Resources
Facilitating Shared Decision-Making: Patient Action Plan
Facilitating Shared Decision-Making: Patient Action Plan

The Patient Action Planning tool integrates motivational interviewing and health literacy to create a simple guide for facilitating shared decision-making with patients. 

Motivational Interviewing Quick Guide
Motivational Interviewing Quick Guide

This overview provides an at-a-glance summary of the core concepts and skills of motivational interviewing.

Motivational Interviewing Radio Play and Facilitator Guide
Motivational Interviewing Radio Play and Facilitator Guide

This radio play describes how motivational interviewing practitioners use questions to help people resolve ambivalence and connect to their intrinsic motivation. The radio play and facilitator guide also provide an example of how we use popular education in our workshops.