I’ve been on social media long enough to see the “enshittification.” There is widespread anti-science sentiment, which can erode the trust we usually expect from our patients, as their physicians. Without trust, our patients can skip the medicines we prescribe or miss recommended followups. There is improvement in health outcomes when patients trust their physicians and the care they receive.
“Social trust refers to individuals’ trust in institutions or systems, such as the healthcare system or physicians in general, while interpersonal trust refers to the trust between two individuals. Social trust is believed to affect interpersonal trust in medical settings… Mayer et al… defined trust as the willingness of an individual to be vulnerable to the actions of another based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control the other party.”
– Lerch, S.P., Hänggi, R., Bussmann, Y. et al. A model of contributors to a trusting patient-physician relationship: a critical review using a systematic search strategy. BMC Prim. Care 25, 194 (2024). https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-024-02435-z
T1. What factors are most important in building trust between patients and physicians?
T2. Share an experience where trust was built or broken between physician and patient? What lessons can be learned from this experience?
T3. How can physicians rebuild trust after it has been damaged?
"He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."
- Simon Taylor Coleridge
Simon Taylor Coleridge is right! “He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.” It’s not just about medical expertise. Our patients learn to trust us because we inspire hope. See you at the #HealthXPH chat tonight on BlueSky, 17 May 2025, 9 pm Manila time).