The back and forth, questions and listening process found in the rhythm of the conversation, is the central part of something called the Elicit-Provide-Elicit feedback loop. 

By focusing the conversation on what’s important to your patient and then understanding how they plan to get it, this motivational interviewing technique gives you incredible insight into what your patient’s needs and values are. 

When you start to use Elicit-Provide-Elicit during each patient interaction, you’ll start saving time and energy by quickly learning exactly what’s most important to your patient. Practice staying with Elicit-Provide-Elicit for as long as time and the conversation allows in order to get the most out of the process.

This is what Elicit-Provide-Elicit looks like: 

FIRST: 
We ELICIT information from our patients in the form of open-ended questions and then listen to the answers. 

What ELICIT Might Look Like:

• Providing empathy: Man, no rice at all? That sounds really hard to do.
• Asking what they think of the decision they made or was made for them: Those are 2 really big changes to do all at once. How do you think you’ll do eliminating rice AND exercising more?

SECOND: As we ask what kind of information our client would find most helpful, we can then PROVIDE feedback, specific to their answer.

What PROVIDE Might Look Like:

• Re-establish your patient’s goal and their history of the change: So is losing weight your number 1 goal right now? Have you done anything in the past that’s worked really well?
• Asking if they have any questions about making any of that happen: How can I help you get more comfortable getting there?

THIRD: Without assuming we’ve been clear, we then ELICIT information from our client again, asking them if our feedback was both helpful and complete.

What ELICIT Might Look Like:

• Confirming helpfulness: What do you think of those ideas?
• Confirming information was complete: Is there anything else you think would be helpful?

“The longer you can play this part of the conversation out, the more you’ll keep your client engaged and forced to continually evaluate their own capabilities. Once you switch to giving advice, you’ll see your client move into a more passive state, limiting your ability to get your client to focus on how and what they feel they can do to reach their goals. This can help your client develop their own plan of action that you can then support them in shoring up and answering some logistical questions.” (Molly Kellogg, book 2)