Telephone-based motivational interviewing for medication adherence: a systematic review

Adherence to prescribed medications continues to be a problem in the treatment of chronic disease. Motivational interviewing (MI) has been shown to be successful for eliciting patients' motivations to change their medication-taking behaviors. Due to the constraints of the US healthcare system, patients do not always have in-person access to providers. Because of this, there is increasing use of non-traditional healthcare delivery methods such as telephonic counseling. A systematic review was conducted among published studies of telephone-based MI interventions aimed at improving the health behavior change target of medication adherence. The goals of this review were to (1) examine and describe evidence and gaps in the literature for telephonically delivered MI interventions for medication adherence and (2) discuss the implications of the findings for research and practice. The MEDLINE, CINAHL, psycINFO, psycARTICLES, Academic Search Premier, Alt HealthWatch, Health Source: Consumer Edition, and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition databases were searched for peer-reviewed research publications between 1991 and October 2012. A total of nine articles were retained for review. The quality of the studies and the interventions varied significantly, which precluded making definitive conclusions but findings among a majority of retained studies suggest that telephone-based MI may help improve medication adherence. The included studies provided promising results and justification for continued exploration in the provision of MI via telephone encounters. Future research is needed to address gaps in the current literature but the results suggest that MI may be an efficient option for healthcare professionals seeking an evidence-based method to reach remote or inaccessible patients to help them improve their medication adherence.