The measurement and acquisition of skills in behaviour change counselling

Lane, Claire Alice 2006. The measurement and acquisition of skills in behaviour change counselling. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

Although mortality from diseases such as coronary heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, liver disease and type-two diabetes is decreasing, morbidity and premature death is increasing. These conditions are related to a number of risk factors, including health behaviours (smoking, diet, lack of physical activity and alcohol consumption). In an attempt to modify patients’ lifestyles, the delivery of a number of complex psychosocial interventions has been attempted by healthcare practitioners in clinical practice. However, in many cases interventions are not adequately described, and there has been very little information regarding how practitioners were trained, and indeed how well they were able to deliver the intervention. This makes evaluation of the efficacy and effectiveness of these interventions difficult. There is a lack of studies that evaluate which training methods lead to the best levels of skill acquisition. One intervention that has shown promise in helping patients to make changes to their lifestyles is behaviour change counselling (BCC), an adaptation of motivational interviewing. As with other complex interventions, the evaluation of skill competence and training methods has been generally poor. The studies in this thesis aim to tackle the issues of measuring skill acquisition in BCC. An instrument - the Behaviour Change Counselling Index (BECCI) - was developed to measure practitioner skill competence in delivering BCC. The Experiential Practice Experiment was conducted to discover whether the use of simulated patients, rather than role-play with fellow trainees lead to enhanced skill acquisition in BCC. Participants also provided ratings of their practice sessions within their experimental conditions. There was no significant difference in BECCI scores or ratings of practice sessions between practitioners who practiced skills with simulated patients in comparison to those who performed role-play. There may be a relationship between participants' feelings regarding the practice sessions and BCC skill acquisition, but results were inconclusive.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Medicine
Subjects:	R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2016 23:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55423

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