Motivational Interviewing for Weight Loss in Primary Care

ABSTRACT Brumbaugh, Hannah. Motivational Interviewing for Weight Loss in Primary Care. Unpublished Doctor of Nursing Practice scholarly project, University of Northern Colorado, 2019. Obesity is prevalent in this country and leads to many preventable deaths and chronic illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, and various types of cancers. “Obesity is prevalent in the western world and leads to reduced life expectancy due to increased risk of chronic illness such cardiovascular disease” (Hardcastle, Taylor, Bailey, Harley, & Hagger, 2013, p. 2) It also has been established in the literature that even a small amount of weight loss, as little as 5% of a patient’s total body weight, has statistically meaningful risk reductions, especially those that relate to cardiovascular health. Behavioral interventions such as motivational interviewing that specifically targets obesity through changes in diet and exercise have been shown to be an affective intervention for providers to use for weight loss discussions (Hardcastle et al., 2013). This Doctor of Nursing Practice scholarly project sought to address the way primary care providers discuss weight loss interventions with 25 patients that was patient centered. This was accomplished with the creation use of a template based on motivational interviewing and the health belief model. The template was created to increase patient and provider self-confidence with weight loss discussion that had the potential to lead to a 5% to10% weight loss in patients. The preliminary results were iv promising and seem to align with current research about motivational interviewing in primary care. Further research is needed to validate the template to determine if the positive preliminary results of the project could be reproduced with statistically significant data