Behaviour Change Skills: Enhancing Patient Motivation

Although it is well known that changing unhelpful health behaviours will improve people’s health and reduce their risk of disease; starting and keeping up long-term behaviour change is extremely difficult. People may have mixed feelings about changing their behaviour in the first place and once they do start to change they often lose motivation during the process. Health professionals are in a strategic position to influence and facilitate motivation and change. Despite this; they are not traditionally trained in the use of motivational strategies for behaviour change. This course provides an opportunity to learn more about motivation and explore its application in practice.