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 informa- tion 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 pat- terns, 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 rela- tionship between them.