Teaching & Mentoring Motivational Interviewing with Clinical Staff Working within a Sexually Transmitted Infection Clinic

Abstract

Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) continue to be alarming issues in the United States, costing billions of dollars to treat. The current model of STI treatment begins when a patient presents for STI screening. If treatment is indicated, clinical staff provide the treatment but may not utilize effective communication strategies to assist the patient to understand the consequences of their high-risk sexual behaviors. Motivational interviewing (MI) is a well-known counseling method that has been used to effectively create change in patient behavior. As such, the potential benefit of utilizing MI to improve clinical staff communication could result in an impactful change to a patient’s high-risk sexual behavior. This project investigated if training and mentoring in MI techniques could increase a clinical staff’s willingness to implement MI. The target population was clinical staff working in an eastern North Carolina rural county health department’s sexually transmitted infections clinic. Clinicians exposed to brief targeted MI training sessions demonstrated an increase in their confidence levels with utilizing MI during patient interactions.