The representation of the psychological intervention among Italian hospital physicians

The growing gap between medicine and psychology, and their respective scientific enhancement, highlight the need for interdisciplinary integration efforts in order to achieve a global vision of health-illness phenomena. Although the WHO mentions the use of multi-disciplinary teams as the most coherent strategy within a bio-psycho-social paradigm, in Italy, these experiences are still rare, especially in hospital settings. The development of an integrated healthcare culture mostly depends on the representations of health interventions, and psychological competence and its usefulness held by healthcare professionals. However, few studies analyzed physicians' representations of the psychological intervention. In order to respond to this gap, this study aimed at exploring Italian physicians’ representations of the psychological intervention within hospital settings. The absence of validated instruments, led to the development of a questionnaire comprising 13 scales, based on a prior qualitative pilot study. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 172 Italian hospital physicians. The analysis allowed the identification of 3 cultural clusters that described the way hospital physicians represent themselves and the psychological intervention. In the first cluster, physicians considered the psychological competence useful both for the patients and the hospital staff. In the other two clusters, physicians expressed a provocative attitude regarding psychological professionals, and attitudes of rejection of their utility. Differences in terms of gender, age, specialisation, years of professional activity, have been identified. The contribution intends to launch a reflection about how psychologists can plan their interventions in a more contextualized way, in order to enhance the quality of hospital services.