Training for midwives in motivational interviewing: Tailored intervention for smoking cessation in pregnancy

Introduction: There is no integrative concept for smoking cessation in pregnancy in Germany. Women in difficult social situations need basic and personally oriented counselling to support their health effectively. Midwives meet the requirements to give the necessary support to women. Motivational Interviewing: One part of the EURO-scip III project was, to develop and execute trainings in Motivational Interviewing for midwives, which is described in this article. The aim of the training was to give midwives an understanding of Motivational Interviewing developed by Miller and Rollnick (1991) and on how to use it in the field with pregnant women to quit smoking during pregnancy. The characteristics of the Mi-Training for midwives: Compared to MI in the field of drug addiction the two days of training focus for example on the training of counselling strategies during the initial stages (towards contemplation). Stages: The theoretical background of the stages of change and the revolving-door schema of smoking is transferred into practice in three parts: 1. Midwives learned to find out as early as possible in which stage of change the woman is. 2. Midwives developed a specific counselling strategy. 3. In an additional training part, multi-stress and complex situations were under examination. The midwives were trained to use special techniques like the Importance Ruler" to progress a conversation and to manage complex counselling situations. Conclusions: MI-training gave midwives more hands-on tools for their daily work. It seems to be helpful to deliver more strategies for counselling situations on different stages of change. © 2007 Springer-Verlag."