By M. Samantha Lewis, Michelle Hungerford, and Garnett McMillan
This article is a part of the July/August 2019, Volume 31, Number 4, Audiology Today issue.
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative approach to having a conversation about making a behavior change (Miller and Rollnick, 2013). While originally used to address problematic drinking, it has been used successfully with regard to other behavior changes, such as medication adherence (Palacio et al, 2016). The reader is referred to Rollnick et al (2008) for an overview of applications in health-care settings. It seems logical that MI also might be a beneficial approach for audiologists to use when speaking to their patients about the behavior changes associated with using hearing aids.
A recent pilot investigation (Aazh, 2016) explored the potential benefits of MI for individuals who were not making regular use of their hearing aids. The group of subjects who received the standard of care plus MI had a greater increase in hearing aid use than the group who only received the standard of care. While this was only a pilot investigation, these results are encouraging and suggest that MI may facilitate hearing aid use. In fact, this benefit was partially supported by another recent pilot study (Solheim et al, 2018).
While Ferguson et al (2016a) did not use MI, these authors explored the effectiveness of using the Ida Institute’s motivational tools (http://idainstitute.com/toolbox/motivation_tools) with patients who were about to get hearing aids for the first time. Two of their tools help facilitate a collaborative conversation about behavior change.
As compared to the control group, Ferguson et al (2016a) reported that the subjects who were in the motivational-tools group showed lower anxiety and higher self-efficacy at the end of the evaluation appointment. They reported feeling more involved in the decision-making process and getting understandable answers to their questions at the hearing aid fitting (HAF) appointment.
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