Motivation issues

(from the chapter) The reader should keep in mind that, despite the availability of potentially effective pain management techniques, there often remain many patients who do not improve or who actually relapse. Often, this failure can be traced to low patient motivation for treatment and its compliance requirements. The stages-of-change model, reviewed in this chapter, has been shown to be a very useful conceptualization of a patient's readiness to make the necessary changes in a pain management program. If a patient is not in the action stage, then he or she may not be ready or motivated to make the necessary changes. Motivational Interviewing (MI) has been developed to help enhance the motivation of patients to make changes in a treatment environment. Such interviewing was developed as an approach to clinician-patient interaction that focuses on enhancing patients' motivation to change. The basic principles of MI are reviewed in this chapter, and examples of the process are given. MI can be used as a motivational technique for all components of pain management, including pharmacotherapy. Finally, a more general model of motivation for pain self-management is presented that shows great promise for maximizing the motivational process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)