Customer Reviews

Health Behavior Change: A Guide for Practitioners

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's a bit unusual for me to agree with customer reviews that both praise and criticize a book, but in this case I do. On the one hand, Rollnick et al, have done an amazing job of applying motivational interviewing and stages of change theory to the short interchanges common with patients in a medical setting. For those readers already well-versed in stages of change, this is an excellent and thought-provoking approach. I believe many "counselors" of various stripes would benefit from the applications advocated in this book.

On the other hand, I found the theoretical foundation wholly inadequate. While I appreciated the attempts of the authors to carefully distinguish between evidence-based substantiation of their guidelines and the weaker suggestions based on clinical practice, I felt that there was a preponderance of the latter.

I was also overwhelmed by the repetition included in the three final "application" chapters. Surely there is a better way to present this material! Frankly, the final chapters are so tedious to read that I suspect the average medical professional tends to conclude this volume with a less-than-enthusiastic feeling regarding the guidance.

My advice is to read through chapter 5, at the most, and to consult chapters 6-8 only after encountering specific problems in applying the techniques provided.

Many of the chronic illnesses and other problems that cause people to seek health care are closely linked to behavioral patterns related to issues such as diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, and stress. Treatment is often addressed to acute care without helping patients examine and change the underlying behaviors. There are good reasons why this is so. Managed care increasingly limits the amount of time that medical professionals can spend with patients. Many doctors, nurses, and other health professionals feel unprepared or frustrated about changing patient behavior patterns. Indeed, medical training usually provides little guidance in how to help patients change health behaviors.

In this clearly written and highly practical little book, Rollnick and his colleagues offer a range of effective methods that can be used within the context and time constraints of primary or specialist care. The goal is not to turn doctors and nurses into counselors or psychotherapists. Rather, they argue persuasively that there is much that can be done within medical practice to help patients change the behavior patterns that bring them back again and again to the doctor's office. The methods are well-described, and derived from research on effective brief interventions for behavior change.

I am a nurse who has worked in the areas of AIDS Counseling and testing, Family Planning and now drug abuse prevention in a school. Sometimes I am called upon to talk to students and "get them worried" about their drug and alcohol use. Much of what I read felt too coercive with students and, in practice, evoked much resistance. This book contains readily applicable techniques for helping your hear your clients concerns better so that you do understand their behavior in the context of their real lives and allows you to help move them toward concern and possibly behavior change. This should be a book included in ALL nursing curricula because of it's readily hands-on use capacity. Surely, reading and applying the book has been a processs (and much like behavior change itself) not a quick fix application. Great stuff.

Health Behavior Change dramatically simplifies and expands the Motivational Interviewing counseling style techniques underlined in Motivational Interviewing by Miller and Rollnick (1991). Health Behavior Change is very easy to read and provides a practical menu of "tools" that could assist individuals thinking and/or committed to behavioral change. Although the authors' targets are medical professionals, the book is a must for everyone involve in health care promotion and/or counseling (prevention workers, outreach workers, treatment advocates, drug and alcohol counselors, psychotherapists). It is also a great book to pass along to family members and anyone concerned in assisting others to move in the direction of change. The most important message: when we are moving in the direction of behavioral change, we need helpers who care, remain non-judgmental and help us tip the balance towards healthier behaviors. Assisting people to set their own realistic goals --however small, is crucial to facilitate meaningful, long lasting change. Love this book!!!!

HIV Service Provider and Trainer, San Francisco Bay Area, CA

This is an excellent book to be used as a guideline for anyone providing wellness coaching. It includes case examples of what to say, and what NOT to say.

A must have for NP school. Great book. Thanks Amazon for providing the best prices and great services.

Useful basics for any professional whose work with patients requires cooperation. Health practitioners working to improve their ability to assess, motivate, and educate patients as partners for better health outcomes will want to read this honest, practical yet reflective book twice - and then again - while trying out its ideas, practicing, and growing into its approach to care. Useful both for persons in training and already in practice.

A simple, easy, and yet deep, thought-provoking book. ONLY ONE of this kind.

I am tring hard to implement some of their methods in Japan.

This book gave helpful perspectives regarding doctor-patient communication, but was not very enlightening. The problem might be that it was written from the perspective that the doctor is always correct, and the patient is always some poor sap who needs to be enlightened and trained as you would a child. I don't see this book awakening the human within some budding physician and transforming the physician into some effective communicator. The worst part was how many pages it took to convey helpful information.

This is surprising because the motivational interviewing video training from these authors is exemplary. Maybe the video approach did not transfer well to book.

I gave it more than one star because it does have good strategies in it, and I believe reading it would be better than reading nothing.