What Influences Patients’ Trust in Physicians?

Abstract

This chapter describes the various factors that influence trust in physicians in the context of the study. Comfort and shared identity, personal involvement of the physician with the patient, communication, behaviours and approach of the physician, economic factors and health awareness of the patients, all have an influence on the trust in physicians. This chapter describes the frequencies of the responses of study participants on the various factors influencing trust in physicians. Further, it also reports the results of segmentation of the community after factor and cluster analyses methods into people who trust their physicians predominantly based on comfort, those who trust based on personal involvement of the physician, those who trust based on emotions and finally ones who trust based on behaviour and communication of the physician. It further describes the attributes of people within each cluster.