Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 28, 2025

E-Patient Counseling Trial E-PACO: Computer Based Education versus Nurse Counseling for Patients to Prepare for Colonoscopy
Published on: August 1, 2019
How healthcare structures and communication delivery influence trust: a parallel-group randomized controlled trial
Stephen Cantarutti1, Emmanuel M Pothos1
1Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB UK Department of Psychology, City, University of London.
Background:
According to recent polling, public trust in the healthcare sector remains low relative to other industries globally. The implications of low healthcare trust permeate throughout the industry in a number of ways, most visibly by discouraging therapy compliance.
Methods:
This study investigated four putative determinants of trust in healthcare-related scenarios: individuals vs. collective groups as communicators of healthcare advice; expert vs. laypeople as providers of healthcare communication; public vs. private healthcare sector; and positive vs. negative information. Two hundred seventy-four participants were recruited via Prolific Academic and were presented with four statements in random order, related to a positive reflection of the public healthcare sector, a negative reflection of the public healthcare sector, a positive reflection of the private healthcare sector and a negative reflection of the private healthcare sector. According to these reflection, participants were repeatedly asked to rate the system on its trustworthiness. Trust outcomes were constructed using a four-dimension framework, consisting of benevolence, reliability, competence and predictability.
Results:
Claims relating to the public sector had a significantly stronger impact on benevolence and reliability than claims relating to the private sector; claims from individuals had a significantly stronger impact on all trust variables than claims from collectives; and claims from laypeople had a significantly greater impact on reliability and competence ratings than claims from experts.
Conclusions:
The findings in this study offer insight into the patterns with which trust decisions are made in healthcare contexts. More importantly, this research offers a novel perspective of how different factors interact to affect the various facets of trust. These results provide a foundation for future study in this evolving area, and offer insights into designing effective communication strategies that cultivate greater levels of individual trust in the healthcare sector.
Supplementary Information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-021-01620-z.
More Related Videos
04:53A Clinical Trial Assessing the Safety, Efficacy, and Delivery of Olive-Oil-Based Three-Chamber Bags for Parenteral Nutrition
Published on: September 20, 2019
06:18The Collective Trust Game: An Online Group Adaptation of the Trust Game Based on the HoneyComb Paradigm
Published on: October 20, 2022
Related Concept Videos
Blinding
Levels of Communication II: Organizational, Public, and Group Dynamics
Blind Procedures
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...
Social Proof