Where Trust Flourishes: Perceptions of Clinicians Who Trust Their Organizations and Are Trusted by Their Patients

• Published in: Annals of family medicine 2021-11, Vol.19 (6), p.521-526
• Main Authors: Linzer, Mark, Neprash, Hannah, Brown, Roger, Williams, Eric, Audi, Crystal, Poplau, Sara, Prasad, Kriti, Khullar, Dhruv
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Administration; Communication; Corporate culture; Health aspects; Hospitals; Humans; Organizational Culture; Original Research; Perception; Physicians; Psychological aspects; Social aspects; Surveys; Trust; Trust (Psychology); Workplace
• ISSN: 1544-1709; 1544-1717
• DOI: 10.1370/afm.2732

Trust is an essential component of health care. Clinicians need to trust organizational leaders to provide a safe and effective work environment, and patients need to trust their clinicians to deliver high-quality care while addressing their health care needs. We sought to determine perceived characteristics of clinics by clinicians who trust their organizations and whose patients have trust in them. We used baseline data from the Healthy Work Place trial, a randomized trial of interventions to improve work life in 34 Midwest and East Coast primary care clinics, to identify clinic characteristics associated with high clinician and patient trust. The study included 165 clinicians with 1,132 patients. High trust by clinicians with patients who trusted them was found for 34% of 162 clinicians with sufficient data for modeling. High clinician-high patient trust occurred when clinicians perceived their organizational cultures to have (1) an emphasis on quality (odds ratio [OR] 4.95; 95% CI, 2.02-12.15;