Motivational Interviewing For Occupational Therapists: A Practice-Setting Guide for Client Engagemen

Every occupational therapist has met the client who can do the exercise but will not. The one who nods through your education, agrees with your goals, and then does nothing at home. The one whose family begs you to push harder. The one who meets every discharge criterion and still refuses to leave.

The Missing Clinical Skill

Occupational therapy was built on client-centered practice. But most OT programs teach the philosophy without teaching the method. When a client says "I do not see the point," most therapists reach for more education, more encouragement, or a more creative activity. Research shows that all three strategies backfire with ambivalent clients. Non-adherence to home exercise programs runs as high as 65 percent. The problem was never the program. It was the conversation.

What This Book Delivers

Motivational Interviewing for Occupational Therapists is the first book to teach MI specifically through an OT lens, using OT frameworks, OT case studies, and OT practice settings. It maps MI onto the OTPF-4, MOHO, CMOP-E, and PEOP models. It provides conversation scripts, reproducible worksheets, and clinical tools designed for the 20-minute treatment session, not the 50-minute counseling hour.

Across Every OT Setting

Twenty chapters cover MI in acute care, inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient and hand therapy, home health, mental health, pediatric and school-based practice, neurorehabilitation, and geriatric and skilled nursing settings. Each chapter includes composite case studies, practical application sections, and named concepts you can carry into practice tomorrow.

Built for Clinicians, Educators, and Students

Whether you are an OTR/L looking to improve client engagement, a fieldwork educator teaching therapeutic communication, an OT program director seeking evidence-based curriculum content, or a COTA building your clinical skills, this book provides the framework, the language, and the tools. Includes MI-informed goal-setting templates, home exercise adherence conversation guides, discharge readiness assessments, a self-reflection inventory, 50 OT-specific open-ended questions, 10 practice scenarios with model responses, and a fieldwork observation checklist.

Stop working harder than your clients. Start having better conversations.