Data from: Improving patient-centred counselling skills among lay healthcare workers in South Africa using the Thusa-Thuso motivational interviewing training and support program

We developed a motivational Interviewing (MI) counselling training and support program for lay counsellors in South Africa – branded "Thusa-Thuso - helping you help", commonly referred to as Thusa-Thuso. We conducted a pilot study in South Africa to assess the impact of the Thusa-Thuso program for lay counsellors. We aimed to determine its effect on MI technical skills and explore the feasibility of a training-of-trainers (TOT) scale-up strategy among non-governmental (NGO) partners in the HIV treatment program. Adult (≥ 18 years) lay counsellors from ten primary healthcare clinics in Johannesburg participated in the program, attending the ten-day baseline training and quarterly refresher sessions over 12 months. With lay counsellors' and patients' written informed consent, audio recordings of counselling sessions were collected and reviewed using the MI treatment integrity (MITI) coding system to evaluate technical (cultivating change talk and softening sustain talk) and relational (empathy and partnership) competency scores before and after training. Following 12 months of providing support to pilot training participating lay counsellors, we were requested to expand the training to NGO partner team trainers through a one-time five-day Training of Trainers (TOT) format. This involved 127 trainees from November 2020 to January 2021. We report on the TOT training experiences based on focus group discussions with 42 participants conducted six months after the TOT sessions.

我们为南非的非专业咨询员（lay counsellors）开发了一套动机性访谈（Motivational Interviewing, MI）咨询培训与支持项目，该项目品牌化为“Thusa-Thuso——助人自助”，通常简称为Thusa-Thuso。我们在南非开展了一项试点研究，以评估Thusa-Thuso项目对非专业咨询员的应用效果。本研究旨在明确该项目对MI专业技能的影响，并探索在艾滋病治疗项目的非政府组织（Non-Governmental Organization, NGO）合作伙伴间推行培训师培训（Training-of-Trainers, TOT）扩容策略的可行性。来自约翰内斯堡10家基层医疗卫生诊所的18岁及以上成年非专业咨询员参与了本项目，他们完成了为期10天的基线培训，并在12个月内参与了每季度一次的复训课程。在获得非专业咨询员与患者的书面知情同意后，研究人员收集了咨询环节的音频资料，并采用动机性访谈治疗完整性（Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity, MITI）编码体系进行分析，以评估培训前后咨询员在专业技能（培育改变谈话、弱化维持谈话）与关系技能（共情与伙伴关系）层面的能力得分。在为参与试点培训的非专业咨询员提供12个月支持后，应相关方要求，我们通过一次性5天的培训师培训（TOT）模式，将培训项目拓展至非政府组织合作伙伴的团队培训师群体。本次培训师培训共招募127名学员，实施时间为2020年11月至2021年1月。本研究基于培训师培训结束6个月后对42名参与者开展的焦点小组讨论结果，汇报本次TOT培训的实施体验。