Encouraging patients to exercise: motivational interviewing, observation and learning

The physical and psychological health benefits of exercise are well established, yet patients undergoing dialysis commonly live sedentary lives, contributing to comorbidities with other health problems. Motivational interviewing was used to promote exercise during dialysis; the levels of patient exercise correlated positively with the fidelity of the intervention delivery and levels of change talk, and correlated negatively with the levels of sustain talk. Patients were also motivated by seeing other patients engage in intradialytic exercise, and this was an effective method to increase the number of patients engaging in exercise. Patients welcomed the opportunity to try out the exercise; they were motivated by improvements to their health as well as reductions in their boredom and restlessness during a dialysis session. Sustainability proved to be a key issue and efforts should be made to improve staff engagement in promoting an exercise culture that helps continued exercise uptake.