Research Paper on:
Trust-Building in the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
critical for attaining the best patient outcomes. Some have attempted to treat the issue as a sociological, rather than a medical, discipline, but then lost the point of the  sociological study in layers of statistical analysis. Lin (1993) says that "the overuse of statistical methods had [sic] constrain [sic] theoretical thinking" (Lin, 1993; p. lin).  Patient trust has been defined as the "dependability of the physician ... confidence in the physicians knowledge and skills, and confidentiality and reliability of information between  the physician and patient" (Thom and Campbell, 1997; p. 184). Though there has been growing interest in the issue of trust, there has been relatively little research.  This issue becomes increasingly important with the continued trend to managed care programs. We propose to investigate which behaviors on the part of the  physician can contribute to building that trust, and if there are any differences of response among ethnic groups. Literature Review  Thom and Campbell (1997) conducted a qualitative investigation in trust-building between physician and patient. The researchers recruited 29 patients from three practices. The  patients were approached and volunteered to serve in focus groups to discuss the trust issue. The patients ranged in age from 26 to 72, and they participated in a  series of four focus groups. The groups held discussions which were recorded, transcribed and coded "by four readers, using principles of grounded theory" (Thom and Campbell, 1997; p. 169).  The coded responses were classified in seven categories of physician behavior, only two of which related to the technical competence of the physicians discussed. All of the other