The Measurement And Application Of Patient Trust In Physicians

Since the 1990s,the contradiction between doctors and patients has aroused wide concern.In recent years,the doctor-patient relationship in China is also increasingly nervous and becomes a social public problem.Patient-physician trust is believed one of the key elements.So it is very important to develop theories and tools to measure doctor-patient trust.Many foreign scholars have developed some evaluation scales of patient trust,which have been widely used.By contrast,in China,there is a lack of measuring tools for patients’ trust in physicians,and relevant researches are rare.Based on the existing theoretical basis and research progress,this study developed a trust evaluation scale suitable for Chinese patients.Eleven questions were selected after two rounds of expert consultation and a sampling test of 60 patients.Combined with the characteristics of the patients and these 11 questions,a questionnaire was designed.The questionnaire survey was conducted among a random sample of 1100 patients in a tertiary general hospital in Shanghai,to analyze the degree of patients’ trust.The results of the questionnaire showed that these 1100 patients had a great trust in physicians.And there was a significant correlation between the trust degree and patient’s age,education level,treatment category,medical insurance type,and times of visit.Referring to the status of China’s health care,six suggestions are putted forward to improve the patient’s trust in doctors,hoping to provide reference for domestic research on patient trust and provide policy support for solving doctor-patient conflicts.However,using only one hospital as a sample is incomplete.How to further investigation among the patients from other medical institutions is a problem to be faced by the future empirical research.