Effectiveness of a minimal virtual motivational interviewing training for first years medical students: differentiating between pre-test and then-test

•Training patient-centered communication techniques not time-consuming.•Brief virtual Motivational Interviewing Training effective for first years students.•Early training raises awareness about intrinsic knowledge and skills already present.•Future educational effect-evaluations should use both a pre-test and a then-test.•The extent to which response shift differs and might be absent in some participants. Shifting towards patient-centeredness, medical doctors need patient-centered communication skills. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based, collaborative, goal-oriented communication technique to strengthen a person’s own motivation and commitment to change. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a brief virtual role-play MI-training program on MI-knowledge and skills in first-year undergraduate medical students, making use of both a pre-test and a then-test (retrospective pre-test) to check for response shift in evaluating the educational intervention. Four 10–15 min MI-game-based training conversations embedded in the Kognito Conversation Platform™ were offered to the students using a single-group Interrupted Time Series design. Participants included 339 undergraduate medical students (RR= 83.1%). The one-hour MI virtual training proved effective in two ways: participants gained knowledge and skills, and increased awareness of the existing intrinsic knowledge and skill they already possess to communicate with future patients in a patient-centered way. A brief one-hour MI-training simulation can be effective even if offered at an early stage during medical education. Furthermore, response shift varied and was not present in all students. The addition of a then-test to the study design reveals results that otherwise would not have been found.