Client Role

==Preparing a Client Role==

'''Abstract''': Proper preparation for a client role-play can often prevent problems (like the A client from hell”), and help the exercise to more fully achieve intended goals.

'''Overview''': Role-play is a useful method for demonstrating and practicing motivational interviewing, and trainees often like to see it happen in front of them. Trainers often set up demonstration role-plays which involve having a trainee play the part of a typical client in their setting, with the trainer (or another learner) playing the part of the interviewer. There is a temptation in this circumstance for the person role-playing the client to present the most difficult, impossible, resistant or hostile case, thereby presenting an impasse in the demonstration.

'''Guidelines''':
1) Start with a clear statement of the learning objectives of the exercise. Then construct a client scenario that serves those learning objectives. For example, when participants are first learning to elicit change talk, it is not helpful to have a highly resistant client. Use a "readiness ruler” (from zero readiness to change, to 10 as completely ready to change) to establish an appropriate difficulty target level for the base. For first practice of eliciting change talk, for example, an appropriate readiness level might be 7 or 8. When practicing how to cope with resistance, a level of 3 or 4 may be more appropriate.
2) Tailor the role-play to the setting. Use suggestions from the trainees to make a case scenario. Be sure to go over, in advance of the role-play, the reasons this client would want to change and the strengths that he or she brings to the interview, thereby insuring some discrepancy. A scanty client scenario invites poor results.
3) Use caution when selecting a volunteer for role-plays. The person who is the most eager to participate may be exactly the one who is determined to show you how impossible his or her clients are. Better to select a trainee who has demonstrated good listening skills in previous exercises or shows other evidence of a cooperative and flexible nature.

'''Example(s)''':
"Ok, let’s see what we’ve got for the role-play. A 24 year old man living with schizophrenia who is smoking marijuana daily to help him with his symptoms. He is seeing you for an evaluation of his pension benefits, and you are trying to motivate him to consider a change in his smoking. Tell me a little more about his guy. What about his family? What is important to him? Why would he want to stop smoking marijuana?”

'''Notes''': If a role-play really bogs down, consider adjusting the difficulty level of the client, or trying a different scenario with another “client” actor.
If there seems to be an agenda to watch you work with an impossible client, offer to try that later in training, with light-heartedness about it: AIf you think it would be useful, later on you can set up the really difficult client that you have in mind, and we’ll see how I might respond. Of course there are some clients who just aren’t going to change no matter who sees them, but I’ll do my best.”
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from Motivational Interviewing Training for New Trainers (TNT), Resources for Trainers, http://www.motivationalinterviewing.org/