The Ida Motivation Tools, the Line, the Box, and the Circle, were met with great enthusiasm at our Motivational Engagement seminar series.
From our past seminars and workshops, we know that understanding patient motivation is pivotal to enabling the patient and audiologist to understand what is at stake for the individual when thinking about managing hearing loss. Uncovering and exploring our patients’ internal motivations is vital for positive outcomes. Ida’s Motivation Tools can help audiologists gauge a patient’s motivation and encourage patients to be active participants in the management of their hearing loss. We also know that incorporating these tools into an existing way of practicing can be challenging for audiologists.
To better understand these challenges, Melanie (Ida’s senior audiologist) and Hans (Ida’s senior anthropologist) visited a private hearing clinic in London, Cubex, which is owned by Adam Shulberg. Adam has been an important part of our journey at the Ida Institute, as he was one of the first hearing care professionals to participate in our international seminars and ethnographic filming. The ethnographic footage from his clinic has enabled audiologists around the world to reflect on their own practice. It has facilitated much discussion about how to understand patient motivation and how best to address it within the clinical setting. In addition, it has provided valuable material for the development of the e-Learning Lab on our website.
The purpose of our recent visit was to understand the challenges of using the Ida Motivation Tools in daily practice, explore possible applications of the tools and create ideas about how they could be implemented into existing practice.
Orla, Leigh, Jerusha and Adam form the dynamic audiological team at Cubex and prepared for our visit by completing the Ida E-learning course on the Motivation Tools. This enabled us to explore the topic of motivation and to think about its application in depth during the session.
We used Ida’s ethnographic videos, real case examples and role play to explore the Motivation Tools and to think about how they could be used. From the Ida Institute’s point of view, we saw that using peer support and group problem solving is a powerful means to implement new methods in daily practice.
These were some of the reflections from Orla, Leigh, and Adam after the session:
“We found that the Circle tool can really be used in every type of appointment, and you can identify where a patient is quite quickly [by] just asking them a couple of simple questions. Pinpointing them exactly on the Circle can be a bit more challenging than finding out if they are in a behavioral or attitude process. So we found that we could use the Circle to help us get a perception straight away if the patient was in a particular process, and this could help us guide the appointment.”
“We thought that The Line is most appropriate in your first discussions to get an idea where your patient is and where they want to go. You can also use The Line in a follow-up appointment to see how they are feeling about hitting needs from The Box [and their overall goals].”
“The more you use the Tools, the more you understand the value, and the easier it is to determine when to apply them.”
According to Adam, “My view now is that it is absolutely necessary that we understand the human dynamics associated with hearing loss and we fully realize that hearing loss is a communication disorder that affects the patient and all of their communication partners.”
The experience of the Cubex team using the tools is of particular importance to the Ida Institute as our next seminar series focuses on the realities and roadblocks associated with changing organizational and personal practices in the field of audiology. The title of the seminar series is: “Making Change: Realities and Roadblocks”. We believe that the reflections and insights gained will help inform this process. We look forward to hearing from Adam and his team this fall, when they will share their experience working with the Ida Tools.