INTERMED is a patient-centered method designed to assess bio-psycho-social case complexity in general health care. It consists in a structured interview leading to definition of 20 variables by focusing on past, present and future health needs and risks of patients. The total score supports professional decision and guides to patient-oriented care.

To describe the training process on INTERMED interview and to assess its effectiveness.

A training group of 4 doctors and 4 6th-year medical students attended two-hour meetings twice a month (December 2011– March 2012). After introductory sessions on theoretical aspects and inter-trainee simulations on interviewing and scoring techniques, students were assigned the task of producing recorded clinical material, which was used to comment on interviewing skills and practice on scoring. Individual and consensus scores were collected at the end of every session and compared statistically by means of Cohen’s kappa.

Agreement between individual and consensus scores was already considerable at the beginning of the training and improved during the course (Cohen’s kappa raised from 0.39 to 0.65). The participants were interested and motivated. They expressed satisfaction for the skills acquired during the training.

A five months 20-hour training period is a reasonable time not only for learning how to master the instrument, but also for gaining the basic skills required to build a structured interview. These skills would be useful in the whole participants’ career and allowed the implementation of INTERMED as a clinical and research tool in the Modena General Hospital.