Brief intervention.
- Feeback
- Listen with empathy
- Advise
- Goals
- Strategies
Alcohol example
- Feedback
- Provide individualised feedback about the risks associated with continued drinking, based on current drinking patterns, problem indicators, and health status.
- Discuss the potential health problems that can arise from risky alcohol use.
- Listen with empathy
- Listen to the patient’s response.
- This should spark a discussion of the patient’s consumption level and how it relates to general population consumption and any false beliefs held by the patient.
- Advice
- Give clear advice about the importance of changing current drinking patterns and a recommended level of consumption.
- A typical five to 10 minute brief intervention should involve advice on reducing consumption in a persuasive but non-judgemental way.
- Advice can be supported by self-help materials, which provide information about the potential harms of risky alcohol consumption and can provide additional motivation to change.
- Goals
- Discuss the safe drinking limits and assist the patient to set specific goals for changing patterns of consumption.
- Instil optimism in the patient that their chosen goals can be achieved.
- It is in this step, in particular, that motivation-enhancing techniques are used to encourage patients to develop, implement and commit to plans to stop drinking.
- Strategies
- Ask the patient to suggest some strategies for achieving these goals.
- This approach emphasises the patient’s choice to reduce drinking patterns and allows them to choose the approach best suited to their own situation.
- The patient might consider setting a specific limit on alcohol consumption, learning to recognise the antecedents of drinking, and developing skills to avoid drinking in high-risk situations, pacing one’s drinking and learning to cope with everyday problems that lead to drinking.