Motivational interviewing to treat to treat substance abuse disorders in the emergency department: a scoping review

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a patient-centered counseling style for eliciting behavior change. Unlike traditional counseling, which focuses on a pre-determined therapeutic agenda, MI emphasizes the patient\u27s individual goals and attempts to identify individual behavioral patterns that may impede one\u27s ability to accomplish those goals. Prior studies of MI have demonstrated its effectiveness in treating substance abuse in primary care settings after only brief interventions. The effectiveness of MI in the emergency department (ED) has not been definitively established. The methodological frameworks that contributed to the scoping review were a completion of five steps outlined by Arskey and O’Malley (2005) and the Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers Manual Methodology for JBI Scoping Reviews (2015). A search strategy was implemented using PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and greylit.org resulting in 18 articles to be included for the full analysis. The initial search identified 164 studies after the removal of duplicates. 128 studies were excluded on the basis of title and abstract. 36 full texts were assessed for eligibility and 18 were included for full analysis. MI holds great promise as an ED-based intervention due to the brief nature of the intervention and the high prevalence of patients with substance abuse disorders in the ED