April 25, 2025: Application of Motivational Interviewing to Group: Advance Care Planning for Social Work Professionals in Clinical and Community Settings

Friday, April 25, 2025
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Pre-register by April 18, 2025

This course will be in-person on SLU Campus

3 CEHs

$45.00 SLU Alumni and pre-registered SLU practicum instructors

$65.00 All others

Course Description
Presenter: Monica Matthieu, Ph.D., LCSW

Title: Application of Motivational Interviewing to Group: Advance Care Planning for Social Work Professionals in Clinical and Community Settings

Learning Objectives: 

• Use group facilitation skills to conduct Advance Care Planning Via Group Visits (ACP-GV), a patient-centered best practice intervention that can be delivered in health care and community-based settings 
• Enhance basic motivational interviewing (MI) skills by exploring and eliciting health care preferences, values, and needs from participants using specific MI strategies 
• Utilize tools (e.g., worksheets, video, pre-group checklists) and behavioral observation methods (e.g., clinician checklist) to ensure  

Course Description: Clinical professionals and Dr. Matthieu, SLU SSW faculty, recently implemented and evaluated a national best practice program in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that seeks to increase participation in Advance Care Planning (ACP) discussions to honor what matters most to all adults seeking health care, not just Veterans. This CE will provide an in-depth training on the best practice model, Advance Care Planning via Group Visits (ACP-GV) program that engages group participants in a discussion that elicits personal experiences and encourages participant to identify a ‘next step’ to take in the process for planning for future health and mental health care needs. ACP-GV utilizes Motivational Interviewing (MI) principles, skills, and techniques to increase motivation for change and empowerment to take charge of health and well-being by engaging in ACP discussions. In this CE, we will demo a video of a group, provide exemplars for how group facilitators apply the specific MI techniques to the group discussion with participants, and review a full scripted case example of a coded MI-concordant session of ACP-GV delivered with veterans in a healthcare setting. Finally, clinicians working in health care and community settings will prepare a pre-group checklist that will include public access to all needed materials so that they can add this module as a special topic in an ongoing group or offer this one session task group as a workshop upon completion of this CE. 

Bio: Monica Matthieu, PhD, LCSW is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Saint Louis University and is a Research Social Worker for the Central Arkansas Veterans Health Care System, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).  Dr. Matthieu is engaged in research and program evaluation related to VA’s national suicide prevention program, implementation of trauma treatment in the VA, and improving assessment, intervention, and referral to treatment for individuals at risk for suicide in social service and health care settings in the St Louis metro area.