Enhancing psychological intervention in hospital settings: a glimpse of the italian physicians' representations and demands

This contribution presents a research aimed at exploring Italian hospital physicians’ knowledge, representation and demand of psychological intervention in hospital settings. This topic is particularly relevant for the lack of literature both at national and international level. In a first phase a semi-structured pilot interview was submitted to a group of twenty hospital physicians differing in gender, age, professional specialization, hospital and region. From the qualitative data a questionnaire was developed and administered to a wider sample of hospital physicians. The content analysis revealed that the prevalent representation is that of a psychological intervention focused only on the single patient in order to support them and to contain the emotional distress related to the disease event. Although the organizational and relational dimensions were perceived as the most critical ones, there was an inability to consider the psychological competence as useful in fostering organizational functioning of hospital services and in addressing relationship problems in them. This contribution intends to launch a reflection on how qualitative research can improve the comprehension of the demands of psychology in hospital contexts and on how psychologists can use these insights to co-construct their interventions in a more contextualized way, enhancing the quality of healthcare services.