Development of the Verona coding definitions of emotional sequences to code health providers’ responses (VR-CoDES-P) to patient cues and concerns

• DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2010.02.024
• Publication Date: 2010-03-26T14:29:25Z
• Authors: Lidia Del Piccolo; Hanneke de Haes; Cathy Heaven; Jesse Jansen; William Verheul; Jozien Bensing; Svein Bergvik; Myriam Deveugele; Hilde Eide; Ian Fletcher; Claudia Goss; Gerry Humphris; Young-Mi Kim; Wolf Langewitz; Maria Angela Mazzi; Trond Mjaaland; Francesca Moretti; Matthias Nübling; Michela Rimondini; Peter Salmon; Tonje Sibbern; Ingunn Skre; Sandra van Dulmen; Larry Wissow; Bridget Young; Linda Zandbelt; Christa Zimmermann; Arnstein Finset
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Physician-Patient Relations; Emotions; Reproducibility of Results; Anxiety; Middle Aged; Psychologie (PSYC); 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Residence Characteristics; Visual Perception; Humans; Female; Cues; Empathy; Nonverbal Communication; Referral and Consultation; Health provider response; Cue; Concern; VR-CoDES; Communication skills

To present a method to classify health provider responses to patient cues and concerns according to the VR-CoDES-CC (Del Piccolo et al. (2009) [2] and Zimmermann et al. (submitted for publication) [3]). The system permits sequence analysis and a detailed description of how providers handle patient's expressions of emotion.The Verona-CoDES-P system has been developed based on consensus views within the "Verona Network of Sequence Analysis". The different phases of the creation process are described in detail. A reliability study has been conducted on 20 interviews from a convenience sample of 104 psychiatric consultations.The VR-CoDES-P has two main classes of provider responses, corresponding to the degree of explicitness (yes/no) and space (yes/no) that is given by the health provider to each cue/concern expressed by the patient. The system can be further subdivided into 17 individual categories. Statistical analyses showed that the VR-CoDES-P is reliable (agreement 92.86%, Cohen's kappa 0.90 (±0.04) p<0.0001).Once validity and reliability are tested in different settings, the system should be applied to investigate the relationship between provider responses to patients' expression of emotions and outcome variables.Research employing the VR-CoDES-P should be applied to develop research-based approaches to maximize appropriate responses to patients' indirect and overt expressions of emotional needs.