This motivational interviewing training resource is a comprehensive study of an authentic clinical assessment interview. The resource has two components: a high-definition recording of the fifty-two minute interview and a 128-page notebook providing extensive commentary. The licence permits trainers and coaches to share the notebook with their learners. Trainers and coaches are invited to contact Jeff Allison to discuss the diverse uses of this resource with both new learners and experienced MI practitioners.

The notebook contains: a precise transcript of the core interview between the patient and the nurse practitioner; a transcript of a conversation held six months after the interview, in which Jeff Allison discusses with the patient what he’d found helpful; transcripts of brief discussions (also recorded six months later) in which the patient, Sue Hudson Craufurd (the nurse practitioner) and Jeff, explore what was happening at thirty points in the interview; and line-by-line commentaries on the interview provided by Sue, Jeff, Steven M. Berg-Smith, and Tom Barth. Berg-Smith and Barth are widely regarded as outstanding MI trainers/coaches with international reputations. Guidance about using the resource is also provided in the notebook (see page 4).

You’ll find an abstract of the notebook and a sample of the soundtrack at the top of the page. Before listening to the soundtrack, open the notebook and go to page 7 - here you will find the transcript of the interview.

There is nothing remarkable about the Edinburgh Interview, other than the fact that it was recorded. Every day, all over the world, MI practitioners and their patients are struggling to make sense of the dilemmas in which they find themselves constrained. But rarely are these conversations recorded, and it’s rarer still that the parties later agree to document their collaboration.

This is an everyday example of MI done well enough to make a difference. If this interview was untypical of competent MI practice, it could serve no useful purpose for training and practice development coaching. It was just an ordinary working day for the nurse practitioner, but for the patient, it was a day that literally changed the course of his life. It was an extraordinary ordinary day. This resource aims to increase the frequency of such days.

The nurse practitioner recorded the interview in preparation for a monthly practice development meeting in which she and her colleagues took it in turns to present their work. Jeff Allison was the group’s trainer.