Most providers already have competencies in working with health behaviours. The purpose of this site is to facilitate the development of competencies.

We will define what we consider to be the essential principles that can effectively guide a clinician to helping a patient make and sustain change. For each principle the requisite knowledge and skill is identified.

The model of learning that we endorse follows:

Awareness......Competency.....Confidence.......Creativity

Initial exposure to these principles, knowledge issues and skills will help providers become aware of the importance of behaviour change interventions. A common observation from our group is that many providers think that the are using skills competently, only to discover that they :did not know what they did not know”. At this level awareness is building.

Awareness needs to be followed by competency. Competency is built by experiential learning with corrective feedback. This can be challenging for many providers to arrange, and, in one sense, is a behavioural test of how motivated the provider is to incorporate behaviour change interventions into their practice. This can be an uncomfortable issue but canned be avoided. Competency must be demonstrated not assumed or claimed. Our group uses self-evaluation and cased-based review to facilitate competency.

Once competent in the use of skills providers often require time to work with wide-ranging situations in order to develop confidence to address challenging situations. Confidence allows the provider to adapt their skills creatively to address specific contexts and situations.