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Project

Motivational counseling as a lever for sustainable re-employment and higher well-being: the development and evaluation of a training protocol in a health insurance context

Over the last years, the number of patients on sick leave has increased which leads to increased expenditures for our social security system. In 2016 the federal expenses linked to absence from work were larger than those for unemployment for the first time in Belgium. Absence from work can be evaluated in different ways. For a long period of time, occupational and health insurance physicians used merely a biomedical approach with a focus on curing the disease which then was followed by starting the return to work process. This is an outdated and over-simplistic model that nowadays has been replaced for a biopsychosocial model, as a majority of biological, psychological and social factors are ought to play a role within the resumption of work. An important aspect hereby includes the motivation of the patient on sick leave. According to the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) this motivation can be controlled or autonomous and can be influenced through motivational interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 2013).The current project wants to develop, test and evaluate a training protocol that can support occupational physicians and paramedics to use motivational interviewing to motivate their patients to take up an active role in their return to work process.

Date:6 Feb 2021 →  Today
Keywords:motivational interviewing, return to work, occupational health, self-determination theory, work disability
Disciplines:Occupational health and safety, Health counselling, Work and organisational psychology, Health psychology
Project type:PhD project