Motivational Interviewing: Mastering Active Listening

Presented by Dawn Clifford

12-Month Subscription

Unlimited access to:

  • Thousands of CE Courses
  • Patient Education
  • Home Exercise Program
  • And more
Video Runtime: 60 Minutes; Learning Assessment Time: 26 Minutes

Patients want practitioners who are great listeners. Enhance your active listening skills through improving your reflective practice. In delivering affirmations, reflections, and summaries that highlight your patients’ strengths and motivations, you provide the support they need to take an active role in their rehabilitation and recovery.

Meet your instructor

Dawn Clifford

Dawn Clifford is a professor and graduate coordinator at Northern Arizona University. Dr. Clifford earned her BS in nutrition and dietetics at NAU and completed her dietetic internship at the Greater Los Angeles VA Hospital. After working as an outpatient dietitian for a few years, Dr. Clifford returned to school to complete…

Read full bio

Chapters & learning objectives

Active Listening Responses to Enhance Therapeutic Alliance

1. Active Listening Responses to Enhance Therapeutic Alliance

The use of verbal and nonverbal listening skills can dramatically enhance your patient’s clinic experience. Explore the benefits of reflections, affirmations, and summaries within the patient–practitioner interaction. Dialogue and demonstration examples provide evidence of how these active listening skills can strengthen the therapeutic alliance.

Reflective Practice to Progress the Conversation

2. Reflective Practice to Progress the Conversation

Mirroring back what the patient is saying can make the conversation feel stagnant and like you’re talking in circles. Learn how to incorporate complex reflections to enhance your interactions and communicate empathy and curiosity. When you incorporate complex reflections into your interactions with patients, you demonstrate a desire to truly understand your patients’ experiences in their rehab and recovery journey.

Reflections That Motivate

3. Reflections That Motivate

Learn how to tune your ears to hear your patients’ personal motivations for change and deliver reflective listening responses that highlight those reasons. Short, concise reflections of change talk can increase motivation for change and enhance the practitioner–patient relationship.