Trust: The Foundation of Good Health Care

If there is one word that describes the foundation of strong, lasting relationships, it is trust.

For hundreds of thousands of years, trust has shaped how humans get along. Our success as a social species depends on it. The Cambridge Dictionary defines trust this way:

"To believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable."

Sadly, trust isn't as easy to find as it used to be. Researchers, governments, and polling companies have all tracked a slow decline in trust over the past several decades. Many of us feel it too.

Why Has Trust Become Harder?

For most of human history, we judged whether to trust someone face to face through eye contact, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and reputation.

Today, much of that has changed. We rely on:

• Two-factor authentication

• Facial recognition software

• Constantly changing passwords

• Social media, influencers, and online groups

There's often a screen between us. Emojis have replaced facial expressions. And news stories keep reminding us of broken trust, often with little accountability.

But humans are still a social species. When we struggle to trust or to judge who and what is trustworthy, it shows up as loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, and other signs that something isn't right.

How Does Losing Trust Affect Our Health?

The Edelman Trust Barometer has tracked trust in business, government, and other organizations for over 25 years. In their 2023 Special Report on Trust and Health, they surveyed people in 13 countries, including Canada. Here's what they found:

• Money worries affect health. Cost of living and affordability are getting in the way of people's health.

• People don't know who to believe. Media coverage is shaped by politics and large for-profit companies, making it hard to find trustworthy information.

• Where we get health information is changing. Doctors and nurses are still highly trusted. But friends, family, and social media are playing a bigger role.

• People want more say in their care. People feel more empowered to research their own health, compare opinions, and be part of the conversation.

The report also found that people describe good health in four ways:

1. Mental health — feeling happy and able to manage difficult emotions

2. Physical health — being able to do the things that matter, free from illness or injury, and able to manage your own health

3. Social health — having people you trust and can be honest with, who care about you, without facing discrimination

4. Community health — living somewhere clean, safe, peaceful, and environmentally healthy

Trust at Mentor Clinic

Trust matters deeply to us here at Mentor Clinic.

It starts within our own teams. We work with many healthcare disciplines: dietitians, social workers, occupational therapists, physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and others. We spend focused time making sure we communicate openly, welcome different opinions, and stay open to new approaches. Team cohesion and communication have been found to be strong predictors of inter-professional trust, and that affects the care that patients receive.

Trust also has to include our patients. More than ever, people are looking out for themselves and their families. They are researching medical conditions and trying to make sense of information that is often confusing or contradictory. We understand that.

We want our patients to feel comfortable asking questions about their health. No question is too small, and understanding their care is part of their care. At the same time, there's a lot of health information out there, and not all of it is reliable, so we're always happy to help make sense of what matters most for each situation and are always open to their concerns. The practice of medicine includes life-long learning – we can always learn.

Building trust means:

• Communicating openly, face-to-face when possible

• Listening more than talking

• Drawing on trustworthy sources of information

• Being willing to find common ground

• Believing that both patients and clinicians want the same thing: their wellbeing

We provide multiple ways to receive patient feedback and encourage them to fill out forms and surveys. We hope we are, and can continue to be, a source of health information and care that our patients trust.