Effectiveness of a hybrid, obesity-specific counselling programme in improving medical students’ self-efficacy and motivational interviewing skills for paediatric obesity counselling

Abstract

Abstract Background There remain significant barriers to healthcare providers counselling children with obesity and their families on lifestyle modifications to improve health outcomes. Obesity-specific counselling training aims to overcome some of these barriers by equipping healthcare workers with the knowledge and confidence to initiate behaviour change talk with patients. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no obesity-specific counselling training in all medical schools in Singapore. To address this gap, an obesity-specific hybrid training programme was developed for medical students in Singapore, which encompassed e-learning materials on paediatric obesity and motivational interviewing techniques as well as simulated patient exercises. We aim to evaluate the impact of the programme on medical students’ self-efficacy for obesity counselling and motivational interviewing skills, as well as establish participants’ acceptability of the module. Methods The medical students’ self-efficacy for patient-centered obesity counselling before and after reviewing the online materials was measured using the Perceived Competence for Obesity Counselling (PCOC), while their motivational interviewing skills were evaluated using the Behaviour Change Counselling Index (BECCI) based on feedback from trained facilitators. Results There was significant improvement in the medical students’ self-efficacy for obesity counselling and motivational interviewing skills after participating in the online module, as measured on the PCOC and BECCI respectively. The training programme was also well-received among participants, with mean scores of more than 4 out of 5 on all items on the evaluation form. Conclusion Our findings support the introduction of such short obesity-specific counselling workshops in medical school curricula as they can be effective in preparing medical students to manage childhood obesity, and potentially other chronic conditions in children and adults, as junior physicians.

Keywords

• Paediatric obesity
• Motivational interviewing
• Counselling
• Behavioural change
• Medical students