Exploring emotions in dialog between health provider, parent and child. An observational study in pediatric primary care

Introduction

This paper is part of the theoretical thread of health psychology and it presents a study aimed to recognize information useful to implement psychological interventions finalized to personalize medical treatments and engage users in pediatrics.

Objective

In this paper is presented an observational study aimed to explore doctor-patient dialog about worries in pediatric primary care; it has been carried out identifying dialogical interaction patterns, or typical dialog between health providers, parent and child.

Method

We documented conversations in 265 visits; we audio-recordered, transcribed and analyzed them with Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences. Dialogs between participants were analyzed one by one. Frequencies of emotions’ signals (cues/concerns) and responses were analyzed through Redundancy Analysis, aimed to establish a quantitative relationship between these pair of groups of variables considering the asymmetrical relationship between them.

Results

Six “Dialogical Interaction Patterns” were obtained by interpreting these relationships; they show dialogs mainly aimed at obtaining information useful for diagnosis and treatment, with a limited exploration of worries or issues related to the condition of the child. Pediatric conversations seem to be characterized by a very high attention to cognitive aspects of medical questions with a poor consideration of emotions as useful information to medical practice.

Conclusions

These dialogs seem to ensure the rapidity and the efficiency of medical visits. Nevertheless, it could be useful to implement psychological interventions to achieve an enrichment of the dialog between participants, helping them to recognize users’ emotions as useful to define shared medical strategies.