Location

Online; CIUSSS NIM

Category

Health behaviour, Psychology

Recruitment status

Ongoing recruitment

Summary

In order to get people to engage in good health behaviours, doctors typically give people advice about what they should (and should not) be doing in order to improve their health. However, people often resent getting advice when it is perceived as being “told what to do” – which tends to make people resistant to changing their behaviour. This indicates that 'advice-giving' is not an optimal strategy.

More and more health care professionals are thus seeking training in evidence-based communication methods shown to be more effective in generating and maintaining behavioural changes. While there is a wide range of such training programs available, none of these have been developed specifically with the healthcare context in mind. As such, they are most often poorly suited to the needs of healthcare professionals, both in the communication strategies offered and the format of the program itself.

The aim of the MOTIVATOR/eMOTIVATOR initiative is to provide an evidence-based communication framework designed specifically for the context of healthcare – and developed in tandem with its stakeholders. The MOTIVATOR program offers training in Motivational Communication (MC), a flexible communication style rooted in the behavioural sciences. Both in-person and online versions will be tested and optimized using a rigorous, step-by-step methodology to achieve a program that yields results while being truly workable in its context.