Using health psychology and behavioural science to support health professionals in having behaviour change conversations

The average health professional will conduct millions of consultations during their career. These consultations present a unique opportunity for health professionals to discuss health and wellbeing with individuals. Innovations, such as the ‘Making Every Contact Count’ policy in the United Kingdom's National Health Service, encourage and support health professionals to discuss topics such as diet, physical activity, and smoking with patients. Having these conversations is not easy. In teaching health psychology approaches to health professionals, many educators teach conversations about behaviour change. Perhaps ironically, this training does not always conceptualize having these challenging conversations as a health professional behaviour and a skill that can be taught by health psychologists. Therefore, health professionals sometimes develop the capability to have conversations but not the motivation or opportunity. This chapter describes how to use health psychology and behavioural science to support health professionals to develop skills for initiating behaviour change conversations.