Motivational interviewing: the GRIP technique

Motivational interviewing is an interview approach which is becoming more popular among medical practitioners and which is inspired at least partly by solution-focused principles and techniques. The article Communication skills training for general practitioners to promote patient coping: The GRIP approach by Mjaaland and Finset tests the effects of a communication skills training program for general practitioners. The study involved a quasi-experimental design in which 266 consultations with 25 general practitioners were video recorded. 40 hours of communication skills training were given to the intervention group. The Grip acronym, used in the training program stands for:

• Get a measure of the patient's subjective complaints and illness attributions
• Respond to the patient's understanding of the complaints
• Identify resources and solutions
• Promote positive coping

Consultation duration, patient age and distress determined the frequency of the GRIP communication. There was a significant effect of training on four particular subcategories of the GRIP techniques. The effect of the training was most evident in a subgroup of GPs who used little or no resource-oriented communication before training.

Read more:

• Motivational interviewing to improve blood-glucose control in childhood diabetes
• Review of Motivational Interviewing in promoting health behaviors