Effective communication is an important indicator of the quality of hospital services. This paper presents the results of an intervention-research on the communication skills of the members of a hospital team in rheumatology after a training course on communication. The experience involved 23 health professionals (78.3% female, mean aged 38.3± 9.7 years) of the Clinical Rheumatology at the Polytechnic University of Marche (52.2% nurses, 30.4% physicians, 13% OSS, and 4% organic) in a refresher course based on E. Pichon Rivière’s Operative Group technique. Healthcare professionals evaluated their communication skills before and after the course, with the Health Care Communication Questionnaire- Professionals (HCCQ-P). The HCCQ was also completed by 33 patients of the Clinic at the beginning of the course and by 34 at the end to report their experience of communication with these professionals. The results show a trend toward improvement in most HCCQ-P dimensions selfassessed by healthcare professionals and a significant improvement (p < 0.05) in the evaluation of patients with HCCQ. This result encourages the training of hospital teams in communication with the patient.
Keywords: Doctor-patient communication, healthcare professional training, operative group

Massimo Mari, Luca Di Maio, Paola Gremigni, Marinella Sommaruga, Walter Grassi, Communicating with patients: an Operative Group in Rheumatology in "PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE" 1/2011, pp. 135-147, DOI:10.3280/PDS2011-001010