Effectiveness of Student Facilitation in Motivational Interviewing Education

• Patient counseling skills are becoming increasingly important for pharmacists as the profession shifts to a more clinical role. • Schools of pharmacy seek to prepare their students to better communicate with patients. • AACP and ACPE recognize this need.1 • Motivational interviewing (MI) is a patient-centered style of counseling that seeks to have the patient talk themselves into a change. • Done through eliciting change talk from the patient and accessing the patient’s own motivation for making the change.2,3 • Current data shows that MI education improves pharmacy student counseling abilities.1,4 • Pharmacy students are often utilized in educational settings to facilitate or assist with courses, but little is known how this impacts outcomes. • Use of students to facilitate in MI training frees faculty time and resources. • Reinforces the MI skills of both the student leaders and student facilitators • Provides valuable practice and experience for student facilitators • Meets Cedarville University School of Pharmacy mission: “the School of Pharmacy develops exceptional pharmacy practitioners focused on meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of patients through servant leadership.”