Interaction Opportunities in the Health Sector – Developing Professionals’ Counselling Methods

Abstract

Promoting the customer’s change in lifestyle is considered important in health care, but professionals often feel that their methods are insufficient for effective lifestyle counselling. The study describes what kinds of interaction methods are used by health sector professionals in lifestyle counselling. The study aims to find out whether health sector professionals had adopted the method from the further training course on interaction as part of their own practices for customer encounters. The data consists of audio recordings, collected in 2018–2019, of discussions between diabetes specialist nurses who had participated in the interaction training (n 6) and customers (n 23). The method of analysis used was theory-based content analysis. The customer-centred interaction methods used in the appointment discussions were listening to the customer, giving space, open questions, challenging the customer and having a meaningfulness discussion. A general observation was that the methods were not used sufficiently, and they were not used throughout the appointment. The majority of professionals did not include the new way of operating as part of the appointment. Professionals need to have the skill to recognise the customer’s individual capabilities to reflect on their own health and to support these capabilities. These professional skills should be strengthened and their adoption should be supported.