Motivational Interviewing for Older Adults

Changing behaviors can be hard at any age. Motivational interviewing can be used by any clinician when discussing exercise. Motivational interviewing uses open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summarizations to help an older person self-analyze their behaviors. This technique shows improvements in increasing physical activities in older adults, including those with chronic medical conditions. Learning and using the core components of motivational interviewing—open-ended questions, affirming what the patient says, providing reflections to link ideas, and summarizing—may aid in changing exercise behaviors as well as other beneficial behaviors, in older adults.