Communication Skills for Behaviour Change Dr. NoraMakansi is an assistant professor at the Faculty of DentalMedicine andOral Health Sciences at McGill University. How many times have you told patients that they should floss more often, but when they return to your dental office, their habits are unchanged? Dr. Nora Makansi says there are ways to talk to your patients about change that could help. “Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based approach to enable people to recognize and articulate reasons for change,” says Dr. Makansi. “By articulating these reasons, they become more motivated to commit to change.” This counseling approach can be helpful in many settings where behaviour change is needed for better health outcomes. Numerous controlled trials have shown that it is an effective approach in smoking cessation, addiction treatment, suicide prevention, vaccine hesitancy and caries prevention. According to Dr. Makansi, it provides a broad framework that enables effective conversations about change, which makes it a useful tool in dentistry. “In health care, the classic approach is to diagnose a problem, then fix it,” Dr. Makansi says. “We have a righting-reflex where we rush to tell the patient what they should do, which doesn’t always work well for behavior change.” Motivational interviewing is a person-centered counseling approach that brings 20 | 2024 | Issue 1
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