Mistrust in Healthcare

Trust is an essential aspect particularly in health care services since the trust of patients to the insurers, system and providers synthesize the relationship between the two. The measure of trust informs the general public concerning factors which threaten the relationship. Health care systems face critical setbacks based on social, legal and economic factors that contribute to the growing mistrust between the health systems and consumers. A moral, ethical challenge causing distrust among the health care systems and consumers is blending health care with e-commerce. There are questions raised concerning the expected conduct for these health care website medical practitioners with unethical medical practices. Trust facilitates collective action which is the collaboration of people in achieving common goals. Therefore investigating trust issues between the health care systems and consumers using the Beauchamp and Childress principle model and analyzing the setbacks ranking them for the greatest to the least important describes the critical concept of this paper.

Trust displays its essential role concerning the influence it plays mainly in critical therapeutic processes such as patient adherence to therapeutic recommendations general satisfaction with the health care processes and practice. Health care instrumental variables, for example, employing preventive services and procedural enrollment aids in evaluating the achievement of consumer- health care relationships. The trust concept, therefore, is primarily associated with the risky situations between the health care-consumer interactions (Brennan et al., 2013).  According to Beauchamp and Childress there are four bioethics principles which are justice, autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence. Autonomy in health care focuses on informed consent where a health practitioner should not treat a patient unless the patient gives total approval for the treatment.

In addition to this health, practitioners should discuss treatment procedures or treatment with the patient and then document these preferences on patient’s charts. Beneficence requires health practitioners to understand that they are supposed to do well by the patient interests. Non-maleficence requires practitioners to avoid doing things that may harm the patient and would go against their interests. Beneficence and non-maleficence are fundamental principles that stress taking actions that favor the patient’s interests. The use of these principles minimize the distrust levels that occur between the health practitioners and patients (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013). Justice as a bioethics principle focuses on the fair distribution of both medical products and service. In this situation of justice, two patients of similar conditions ought to get equal treatment from health practitioners.

Mistrust levels between health systems and patients cause relational cracks for instance during patient complaints, and lawsuits get administered. The bond formed by patients and health practitioners is due to the limited medical knowledge patients know. Therefore patients need to set aside their pride and trust health practitioners to focus on a common goal which is the patient’s interests. However, when practitioners fail to see the risk involved of getting trusted with weak points and take wrong steps causing distrust great consequences of lawsuits to incur. Another legal issue that contributes to the rise in mistrust levels is increased levels of medical litigation and complains against a physician (Choy & Ismail, 2017). The fact that there are several payment systems within the health care systems that confuse patients hence mistrust since the consumers do not know who to trust or where to seek health care service. The shortage of staff in health facilities due to reduced funding ensures staff gets overworked giving more chances for errors and less quality time for patient care which still cause mistrust.

Notably, those medical practitioners dealing with the internet continue to struggle to regain the lost trust through developing guidelines to determine the underlying medical ethical code of conduct. Therefore the mentioned legal and economic issues negatively impact trust levels between the health systems and patients. Based on subjective factors such as patient ratings and clinical diagnosis, empirical evidence purports that several issues contribute to the mistrust context. Trust arguably is more sensitive to legal, economic and social factors based explicitly on health care systems. In this case, the mistrust levels are considered to be easily impacted by social factors such as patient disclosure, compliance and the health practitioner’s caring conduct (Birkhauer et al., 2017). Health outcomes tend to heavily rely on social impact as they have the most significant effect compared to legal and economic factors.

The second most influential factor refers to the economic factors which string along issues that contribute to mistrust between health care systems and consumers. Issues such as reduced funding of health facilities, several uninsured families, staff shortage, and technological use take advantage of consumers and charge them costly. Cases of reduced health facilities funding are due to shareholders need to raise the profit margins causing patients to suffer direly and less efficient health care. Due to high unemployment, most families cannot afford pre-existing health services such as paying for insurance which makes them prone to contact diseases and unable to access medical care. Staff shortage cause overworking of the practitioners which make them susceptible to making health-related mistakes hence causing a domino effect on patients and mistrust. Legal issues play the least part in influencing mistrust levels as they depend on the other factors for them to contribute to mistrust levels.

An excellent suggestion to help curb the raising mistrust levels is health systems should learn to place consumers first since patients are the best resource health systems. Personal relationships are what patients consider before choosing a health facility to seek health services. Hence, this would aid mend the mistrust issues between the consumer-doctor relationship. Another recommendation to help improve trust is health systems should understand that the source of health processes and treatment alternatives matter. The relationship between the doctor and patient should receive improvement strategies such that the patient finds it easy to trust the person giving them treatment details and alternatives.

 

Reference

Beauchamp, T., & Childress, J. (2013). Principles of biomedical ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Birkhäuer J, Gaab J, Kossowsky J, Hasler S, Krummenacher P, et al. (2017) Trust in the health care professional and health outcome: A meta-analysis. PLOS ONE 12(2): e0170988. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0170988

Choy HH, Ismail A. (2017). Indicators for medical mistrust in healthcare–a review and standpoint from Southeast Asia. Malays J Med Sci;24(6):5–20. https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2017.24.6.2

Brennan N, Barnes R,Calnan M, Corrigan O, Dieppe P &Entwistle V. (2013).  Trust in the health-care provider-patient relationship: a systematic mapping review of the evidence base, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 25, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzt063

 
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