Three Strategies for Implementing Motivational Interviewing on Medical Inpatient Units: See One, Do One, Order One

General medical hospitals provide care for a disproportionate share of patients who abuse or are dependent upon substances. This group is among the most costly to treat and has the poorest medical and substance use outcomes. Motivational interviewing(MI) is a well-recognized, evidenced-based substance use treatment that has been adapted for use as a brief intervention in health care settings. MI is applicable to many health-related behavioral problems, and can be taught to a broad range of health care clinicians. However, it is unclear which implementation strategies will lead to the efficient and proficient uptake of MI in general medical settings, such as medical inpatient units.

Primary care clinicians have multiple practice demands and time constraints. New practices have the greatest chance of being implemented if they are simple and compatible with existing workflows and systems. Two widely used strategies to bring specialized practices into use within general hospital settings are the "see one, do one" apprenticeship model of training and use of consultation-liaison (CL) services. "See one, do one" has been a modus operandi in medical education for centuries and relies upon a competency-based supervision training approach. While it has been empirically validated in the specialty addiction field, less controlled testing of this implementation strategy is available in general medical settings. The apprenticeship approach requires that appropriate patients and trainers are available with high flexibility for teaching and supervision; when applied to behavioral counseling approaches, this may be seen as incompatible with the medical role and time constraints of clinicians. In contrast, ordering MI through CL is a relatively simple, minimally burdensome process and highly compatible with the way clinicians secure other specialist services for their patients in the hospital.

We propose to conduct a randomized controlled implementation trial using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the effectiveness of three different strategies for integrating MI into the practice of healthcare providers working within Yale New Haven Hospital's internal medicine hospitalist service and other general medical inpatient units. Specifically, we will randomize 40 healthcare providers to one of three conditions: (1) a continuing medical education workshop that provides background and "shows" healthcare providers how to conduct MI (the control condition, called SEE ONE); (2) a "see one, do one" apprenticeship model involving workshop training plus live supervision of bedside practice (DO ONE); and (3) ordering MI from CL after learning about it in a workshop (ORDER ONE). Following the respective MI trainings, each healthcare provider will be assessed for the provision of MI to 40 study-eligible inpatients, recruited by the research team after admission to our general medical units.We hypothesize that the percentage of MI sessions delivered by providers to study-eligible inpatients would be higher in both Do One and Order One than See One. We also hypothesize that providers in both Do One and Order One would conduct MI sessions with greater integrity (i.e., adherence to core components of MI and delivery of them with competence) than those in See One.

Please note, as an implementation trial, the primary outcomes for this study focus on provider behaviors, namely, uptake of MI sessions with patients and the adherence and competence in which they conduct MI sessions. No outcome data will be collected and reported at the patient level.