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Medical education and training
Protocol
Supporting workforce practice change: protocol for a pilot study of a motivational interviewing virtual client software tool for health professionals
  1. Candice Oster1,
  2. Adrian Schoo2,
  3. John Litt1,
  4. Andrea Morello1,
  5. Richard Leibbrandt1,
  6. Christopher Antonello3,
  7. David Powers3,
  8. Belinda Lange4,
  9. Anthony Maeder4,
  10. Sharon Lawn1
  1. 1 College of Medicine & Public Health, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  2. 2 Prideaux Centre for Research in Health Professions Education, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  3. 3 College of Science & Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  4. 4 College of Nursing & Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Candice Oster; candice.oster{at}flinders.edu.au

Abstract

Introduction Motivating behavioural change during client consultations is of crucial importance across all health professions to address the growing burden of chronic conditions. Yet health professionals often lack the skills and confidence to use evidence-based counselling interventions to support clients’ behavioural change and mobilise clients’ resources and self-efficacy for change to address their long-term needs.

Aims This pre–post pilot study will develop a motivational interviewing (MI) virtual client training tool for health professionals and test the effectiveness of the educational content and usability of the virtual client interaction.

Methods and analysis Postgraduate students across a range of health disciplines will be recruited. Data assessing attitudes towards preventive healthcare will be collected using a modified version of the Preventive Medicine Attitudes and Activities Questionnaire. Conversations with the virtual client will be analysed using the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity code to assess changes in MI skills. The System Usability Scale will be used to assess the usability of the virtual client training tool.

Ethics and dissemination This protocol was approved by the Flinders University Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee in May 2019. The results of the pilot study will inform the development of an avatar-based mobile application consisting of MI teaching and interactions with a generic virtual client that can be easily adapted to multiple scenarios.

  • motivational interviewing
  • education & training (see medical education & training)
  • virtual client
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033080

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors CO, AS and SL designed the study. All authors provided methodological input into the study design. CO, JL, SL and AS were involved in designing the virtual client conversation. CA, RL, DP and AM were involved in designing and developing the virtual client interaction. CO, AM and BL developed the content for the online learning. All authors were involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important content. All authors have read, reviewed and given final approval of the version to be published.

    • Funding This work was supported by Flinders Foundation Health Seed grant number 3000010982.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval Ethical approval for the pilot study was granted by the Flinders University Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee (project number 8338) in May 2019.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.