Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Trust is one of the most important issues in patient-physician relationship and affects the treatment acceptance and followup from the patient and optimal outcome. Patient trust to emergency physician is different from other physicians in many ways because of patient’s urgent situation and lack of choice in physicians. This paper explores the reasoning for (dis)trust in emergency physicians in Imam khomeini hospital. A qualitative study in Imam khomeyni hospital was done including 5 recorded focused groups (with 3-6 patients in each group) and 8 in-depth interviews with patients. Patient trust’s issues were divided into 2 major groups: 1- issues that depend on emergency physicians (including professionalism; practical skills and physician’s personal factors) 2-issues independent to emergency physicians (including patient’s previous beliefs; environmental and hospital’s factors and patient’s personal factors). Many factors about emergency physicians like personal factors that are extracted from this study were similar to other physicians. In other hand, it seems that patient trust in emergency physicians is affected by environmental factors especially hospital related factors and it is better to consider it as an integrated foundation and not only trust between persons.