Motivational Interviewing as a lever for sustainable re-employment: Development of a Protocol and Training.

Work disability due to chronic disease is a rising problem with high societal and personal cost. The current work rehabilitation interventions are targeted towards relieving the medical condition. In practice, they however don’t not reach their highest potential, as a significant number of patients are left work disabled, or encounter relapse. Building on Self-Determination-Theory, a widely accepted framework of human motivation, recent empirical work pointed at the importance of motivation for sustainable return to work. In line with this, our interventional pilot study shows that motivation-enhancing counselling may be need-satisfying, increases self-determined motivation for work and leads to more sustainable return to work. The current project aims to further develop this intervention and create a training protocol, which helps rehabilitation professionals of social and private insurance institutions to increase effectiveness of return to work interventions for the work disabled.

Keywords:Return to work, Motivational interviewing, Disability

Disciplines:Health promotion and policy, Health management, Occupational health and safety, Counselling psychology