Clinician' emotional resonance as investigation tool: development and preliminary validation of a questionnaire

Aims. A robust psychopathological and psychotherapeutic tradition underscores the importance of the clinician's feelings in the assessment and therapeutic process. Our aim is to develop an instrument to evaluate psychiatrist' experience induced by each patient. This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of this instrument. Methods. Based on the relevant literature and our clinical experience, we developed a self-completed questionnaire consisting of 65 items covering various aspects of the clinician' emotional resonance. Ten psychiatrists completed our questionnaire immediately after first clinical interviews involving a total of 125 patients with various psychiatric diagnoses. Also, they completed the Profile of Mood State (POMS) immediately before and after these interviews. The factor structure and convergent validity of the questionnaire was examined. Results. We identified a six-factor structure. The factors showed acceptable internal consistency and were interpretable as different aspects of the clinician-patient interaction as experienced by the clinician. There was a consistent pattern of correlations between factor scores and changes in POMS scale scores during the clinical interviews. Discussion. The study results, though preliminary, suggest that clinicians' subjective reactions during their interactions with patients can be validly and reliably measured. Quantitative measurement of clinician's subjectivity is potentially useful in both clinical and research settings.