Originally published as the Journal of Health Organization and Management Volume 20 Number 5, 2006
ISBN: 1 84663 164 5
Guest Edited by: Michael Calnan and Rosemary Rowe
This Special Issue examines the notion of trust in a healthcare setting - from the micro level of trust between an individual patient and clinician, between one clinician and another, or between a clinician and a manager; to the macro level which includes patient and public trust in clinicians and managers, healthcare organizations or healthcare systems in general.
The Special Issue provides a comprehensive overview of the literature, as well as in-depth case studies from a broad geographic perspective.
Contents:
Researching trust relations in health care: Conceptual and methodological challenges – an introduction
This article suggests that trust is not primarily dispositional or an individual attribute or psychological state, but is constructed from a set of inter-personal behaviours or from a shared identity. These behaviours are underpinned by sets of institutional rules, laws and customs.
Trust in health care: theoretical perspectives and research needs
This paper presents some key theoretical issues about trust, and seeks to demonstrate their relevance to understanding of, and research on, health systems. Although drawing particularly on empirical evidence from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the paper aims to stimulate thinking across country settings.
Trust relations in health care: developing a theoretical framework for the “new” NHS
This paper provides a conceptual analysis. It proposes that public and patient trust in health care in the UK appears to be shaped by a variety of factors. From a macro perspective, any changes in levels of public trust in health care institutions appear to derive partly from top-down policy initiatives that have altered the way in which health services are organized and partly from broader social and cultural processes.
Trust in the context of patient safety problems
This paper considers some implications of recent developments relating to patient safety for understandings of trust in health care contexts.
Conceptualisations of trust in the organizational literature: Some indicators from a complementary perspective
This paper evaluates the non-healthcare organizational literature on conceptualizations of trust. The aim of the paper is to review this diverse literature, and to reflect on the potential insights it might offer healthcare researchers, policy makers and managers.
“You have to cover up the words of the doctor”: The mediation of trust in interpreted consultations in primary care
This paper is based on empirical data from a qualitative study of accounts of interpreted consultations in UK primary care, undertaken in three north London boroughs. In a total of 69 individual interviews and two focus groups, narratives of interpreted consultations were sought from 18 service users, 17 professional interpreters, nine family member interpreters, 13 general practitioners, 15 nurses, eight receptionists, and three practice managers.
Researching medical trust in the United States
Empirical research of medical trust is burgeoning in the USA, and a fairly clear conceptual model of interpersonal physician trust has emerged. However, most studies focus on individual patients and their physicians, due to the highly individualistic attitudes that prevail in the USA. Lacking are studies of more social dimensions of trust in broader medical institutions. A conceptual model of trust is presented to help draw these relevant distinctions, and to review the US literature.
Public trust in health care: a performance indicator?
If public trust in health care is to be used as a performance indicator for health care systems, its measurement has to be sensitive to changes in the health care system. For this purpose, this study has monitored public trust in health care in The Netherlands over an eight-year period, from 1997 to 2004. The study expected to find a decrease in public trust, with a low point in 2002.
Trust relations in health care: an agenda for future research
At an international workshop on trust organised by the UK MRC Health Services Research Collaboration there was broad agreement that trust was still a salient issue in diverse health care contexts. The workshop proceedings identified a number of important questions for empirical research and several key conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions relating to trust that need to be addressed in support of or alongside this.
About the Journal of Health Organization and Management
The aim of the Journal of Health Organization and Management is to provide a forum whereby academics and all those involved in managing and delivering health services throughout Europe and the wider world can explore, debate and analyze the latest leading-edge research in the field of health management and leadership and its relationship to the practice of health management. The objectives are: to secure and publish rigorous academic papers of the highest standard; to secure and publish applied papers that explore ways of applying the best management practices within health services, and to initiate a debate between the theoretical and applied sections of the journal.
Visit the Journal of Health Organization and Management homepage
