Clinical Psychology

Coordinator: Professor Lidia Del Piccolo
Members: Dr. Michela Rimondini, Ph.D; Dr. Claudia Goss, MD, PhD; Dr. Cinzia Perlini, Ph.D, Dr. Maria Angela Mazzi, Ph.D, stat.;Dr. Olivia Danzi, Ph.D student; Dr. Isolde Bush, Ph.D student, Dr. Valeria Donisi, Ph.D, post-doc

The Section of Clinical Psychology provides care, education and research.
Clinical activity consists in individual and family psychological counselling or psychotherapy, provided for patients attending the University Hospital of Verona and for outpatients suffering from various organic diseases. Support and advice is also provided to health professionals working at the University Hospital of Verona.
Education and training is provided either for undergraduate students in medicine or in other health professions, post-graduate residents, trainees in psychotherapy and post-graduate Ph.D. students or physicians who attend master courses in risk management and communication skills.
The areas of research regard:
1. The development and standardization of instruments to analyse the quality of communication in healthcare setting: Verona Medical Interview Classification System, (VR-MICS) (Saltini et al.1998, Del Piccolo et al.1999; 2005); Verona Psychiatric Interview Classification System, (VR-PICS) (Rimondini et al., 2004); Verona Patient-centred Communication rating Scale, (VR-COPE) (Del Piccolo et al., 2006) ; Verona Coding of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES) (Zimmermann et al., 2011; Del Piccolo et al., 2011)
2. Information needs of patients in different medical settings
3. Shared decision making and patient involvement;
4. Risk management & patient safety;
5. Psychophysiological correlates of communication in healthcare;
6. Observational studies and clinical trials.


In the Research Quality Assessment Report (VQR 2011-2014) the Section of Clinical Psychology section had 100% of products evaluated as excellent among those presented (final report GEV and ANVUR, http://www.anvur.org/rapporto/), ranking as the first in Italy in the disciplinary area it belongs to (Area 11b).