Bruce Berger, PhD

The purpose of this article is to describe three innovations: 1) the development of traditional motivational interviewing within substance abuse counseling; 2) our development of a
new conceptual approach to motivational interviewing in health care; and 3) our development of an eight hour elearning program to teach this approach to motivational interviewing in a more accessible, affordable and standardized format. The progression of the article is as
follows: 1) we briefly describe the… Show more

The purpose of this article is to describe three innovations: 1) the development of traditional motivational interviewing within substance abuse counseling; 2) our development of a
new conceptual approach to motivational interviewing in health care; and 3) our development of an eight hour elearning program to teach this approach to motivational interviewing in a more accessible, affordable and standardized format. The progression of the article is as
follows: 1) we briefly describe the development of motivational interviewing (MI) and its impact on health behavior change (assuming the reader has had some exposure to motivational interviewing concepts); 2) we describe how and why we have reformulated Miller’s original approach to MI to fit the training and needs of health care professionals (HCPs); and 3) we describe the thinking and
reasoning that went into the development of an eight hour MI e-learning program. Our overarching purpose is to describe how we came to formulate our approach to motivational interviewing in health care based on 25 years of teaching MI using both traditional approaches to MI and our new approach. The reader is referred to our book, Motivational Interviewing for Health Care Professionals: A Sensible Approach, 2013 for further elaboration of these concepts
and their evolution in health care. Show less

This book presents a new conceptualization of the power of motivational interviewing in producing better patient outcomes in health care. It is loaded with real patient encounters and dialogues to guide health care professionals in learning and applying motivational interviewing.

Objectives To identify the extent of pharmacists’ self-reported antidepressant counseling (SRAC) and to identify factors that may affect pharmacists’ decisions to provide antidepressant counseling.
Design Cross-sectional study.
Setting Alabama community pharmacies in 2011.
Participants Full-time pharmacists from 600 community pharmacies.
Intervention Self-administered survey; three mail contacts with alternate electronic surveys were used.
Main outcome measures Pharmacists’… Show more

Objectives To identify the extent of pharmacists’ self-reported antidepressant counseling (SRAC) and to identify factors that may affect pharmacists’ decisions to provide antidepressant counseling.
Design Cross-sectional study.
Setting Alabama community pharmacies in 2011.
Participants Full-time pharmacists from 600 community pharmacies.
Intervention Self-administered survey; three mail contacts with alternate electronic surveys were used.
Main outcome measures Pharmacists’ SRAC behavior and its relationship with pharmacists’ illness perceptions of depression, self-efficacy, and organizational and environmental influences.
Results 600 surveys were sent; 22 were undeliverable, 1 was partially completed (<80% questions answered), and 118 were completed (20.6% overall response rate). Pharmacists reported low rates of involvement in antidepressant counseling; 61% reported assessing patient knowledge and understanding of depression, and 36% discussed options for managing adverse effects with no more than a few patients. More than one-quarter (28.6%) never asked patients whether they had barriers to taking antidepressants. Pharmacists’ perceptions regarding consequences, control/cure, and the episodic nature of depression, as well as their self-efficacy, had significant relationships ( P < 0.05) with pharmacists’ involvement in antidepressant counseling.
Conclusion Low rates of pharmacists’ involvement in antidepressant counseling were reported. Pharmacists must become more involved in counseling patients about their antidepressant medications and overcoming barriers preventing greater involvement.
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Evaluated the effect of a software-supported intervention based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change and motivational interviewing (MI) on decreasing discontinuation (or increasing persistency) of Avonex (interferon beta-1a—Biogen), a medication for treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS). Dropout rate in the MI treatment group dropped from 13% to 1.2%. Projected savings to Biogen of $93 million.

A comprehensive review of what works and does not work in regard to improving treatment adherence.

Applications of the Transtheoretical Model of Change to To delineate factors associated with discontinued use of the multiple sclerosis (MS) medication Avonex (interferon beta-1a—Biogen) as part of an effort to develop an intervention to promote treatment persistency.

The application of motivational interviewing to specialty pharmacy