Doctor-patient Trust Crisis Research

The turbulence (known as the8-jiao gate) in Shenzhen Children’s Hospital has finally come to an end after months of nationwide discussion. Yet due to the mutual suspicion and distrust, the game between the patient (Xiaohan) and the doctor has been upgraded in Guangdong Maternity and Child Care Hospital. The dangerous absence of mutual trust has been exposed to the media and the public once again.he trust crisis between doctors and patients is the main issue of the tense doctor-patient relationship. Since the health service industry concerns the people’s livelihood, the absence of trust can exert a negative impact on every individual of the society (though the degree may vary). Due to the kind of work the medical workers are doing, they have to be confronted with the suspicion, questioning and precaution from the patients. The medical practice concerns the core benefits such as life and health, therefore the medical workers may be irresolute about whether they can or should trust the ones who could be the patients or their relations. On the level of society or state, the remission and resolution of the crisis are crucial to social harmony and stability and public emergency control. With this background, my research is aimed to probe into the formation, development and change of the doctor-patient relationship, discover the causes of its present tensity and put forward the related solutions.The trust crisis is a social problem emerging from our socialist construction and modernization, a price to pay for the failure of health service industry reform, incorporating as worsening credit crisis, sharpening doctor-patient conflicts, rising economic burden on the patients, deteriorating medical environment. The causes are as follows:(1) the irrational system---the root of the crisis such as the coexistence of inadequate medical investment and its uneven distribution, the irrational compensation mechanism for public hospitals, the medical insurance system incapable of meeting demands, the absence of medical risk management, the lagging settlement of medical disputes, the paradox in medical law making;(2) the conflicting appeals of hospitals and sufferings----the direct cause such as the deviation in recognizing the medical results, and medical service, the contradicting economic interests;(3) biased reports from mass media, which also deepens the crisis.By examining the present trust crisis, exploring its causes, analyzing it actual harm on both theoretical and practical level, the thesis holds the government should play the leading role in the health service industry, better conflict resolution system, improve the conflict resolution mechanism. Meanwhile the protection of both hospitals’and sufferings’rights, equal stress on medical ethics education and perfection of legal system, promotion of multi-channel interactions between the two parties, and the intensification of management also help to reconcile the conflict and rebuild a harmonious doctor-patient relationship.