Trust Me I'm a Doctor; the Importance of Trust in Promoting High Performance Learning in Medical Education

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. This narrative review of the academic literature explores the concept of trust as an essential component of meaningful learning relationships and high performance learning, by establishing definitions and associated factors. These concepts are supported by current research findings about trust relationships in medical education, sourced from Google, MedEdPublish and PubMed Internet searches. Trust is an essential component of developing bonds and, in particular, the relationship between teacher and learner. The cumulative effects of pedagogy, curriculum, content, and delivery in the teaching and learning of medical students (MS) are well established. The importance of the trust relationship between student and teachers is not widely documented and the current literature is reviewed, addressing aspects of intention, capability, character, and integrity as well as physiological factors, genetic aspects, hormones and neuroscience. Such a detailed dissection and creative analysis of these aspects of medical education, concerning teacher/learner relationships, has not been previously presented. Trust is often perceived as a soft quality, with respect to education; however, it actually provides an environment of hope and inspirational optimism, where teachers and learners can be authentic about their 'best selves'. Developing a good character with high emotional intelligence (EI), having transparent intentions in their relationships requires honest reflection and is a key to enhanced integrity. Building trusting relationships in education instils mutual respect, enhances collaboration, and promotes independent thinking, influenced by transparent and kind mutual interactions. Loyalty and commitment to values and goals ensures the success of the learning environment. Further, neuroscience, involving psychology experiments demonstrate recent evidence to support the importance of trust in relationships and are considered to be relevant to teaching and learning. Thus, expression of hormones and brain function, associated with trusting relationships and interpersonal bonding is explored.