Abbas Badakhshan , Alireza Heidari , Reza Mokhayyeri , Zahra Khatirnameni ,
Volume 3, Issue 1 (1-2025)
Background: Trust is considered a foundation of interpersonal and social communications. Since the patient's trust in the physician affects the exchange of an invaluable good, such as health, it is extremely important. The current study aimed to estimate the patients' trust in physicians of Shahid Sayyad Shirazi and 5 Azar teaching hospitals in Gorgan city in the north of Iran.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 243 hospitalized patients in the aforementioned hospitals were selected using the random stratified sampling method. Eventually, 231 complete questionnaires were received. The data-gathering tool was the Persian version of the Wake Forest questionnaire. Data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman's correlation tests with SPSS software.
Results: The average score of the patients' trust in physicians was 38.09±3.43, which is considered a good status. Most of the participants were male (58.4%), married (74.5%), self-employed (29.9%), and low-educated (51.1%). There was a significant relationship between the inpatient ward and the score of the patient's trust in physicians. No significant relationship was found between age, sex, marital status, education, basic insurance, complementary insurance, employment, and place of residence with the patients' trust in physician’s score.
Conclusion: The acceptable score of patients' trust in physicians should not be an obstacle to necessary interventions for health and political officials of the province. Informing patients about their rights and dignity, teaching communication skills to physicians in collaboration with the medical council, strengthening the basic insurance funds, and supervising the performance of complementary insurance should continuously be considered.
