Are physicians losing public trust?

by Carolyn Thomas   ❤️   Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

San Francisco Emergency physician Dr. Graham Walker is right to be concerned about what he calls “the erosion of public trust in physicians and the healthcare system” – an important trend he wrote about recently in his OffCall opinion piece entitled “Why Doesn’t Anyone Trust Doctors Anymore?” 

This is what he’s urging his medical colleagues to consider:   

“It’s become clear to me that we as physicians and a healthcare system have lost the trust of the public, and I think it’s time we talk openly about what we as a medical community can do to gain it back.”

Dr. Walker offers in his essay potential reasons for this trust erosion crisis, thoughtful suggestions to the medical community to thwart that erosion, but just as importantly, he also asks doctors to speak out publicly in support of their patients. For example, he wants his colleagues to consider the following four steps:

♥  “Posting on social media about the injustices in our healthcare system, and the challenges we personally face when fighting an insurance claim denial, taking call and operating at 2 a.m. – and then working all day on three hours of sleep, or demonstrating our commitment to our patients.”

♥  “Forcing medical professional societies to speak out and use our voice and lobbying power in the name of helping our patients. Notably, many individual doctors feel betrayed by our own leaders. Look no further than this article in Politico.  The American Medical Association said nothing about RFK Jr.’s nomination as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, nor has the American Association of Pediatrics, whose members stand to be the most impacted by Kennedy’s anti-vaccination rhetoric.”

♥  “Calling out bad actors in medicine who intentionally create or distribute misinformation, who profit from snake oil and false hope, or who shirk their ethical responsibilities as medical professionals. ” (See also: Why I deleted that post  – a cautionary tale of the legal threats I faced after calling out a celebrity snake oil salesman with the letters M.D. after his name).

♥  “Acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers. (Hint: one of the easiest ways to find quacks is to look for so-called ‘experts’ who report the ability to provide answers and cures with 100 per cent confidence. Not medicine, nor human biology, nor life itself ever work that way.) I think there’s strength in vulnerability and honesty, and I think most doctors want our patients to understand that we are human beings, not flawless robots.”

What physicians say publicly to and about their patients is important to preserving the public’s need to maintain that trust.

My public relations colleagues often describe goals for our stakeholders as “depositing in the bank of goodwill”.  Nobody – including medical professionals – can afford to keep making withdrawals from that bank without planning regular future deposits. That’s what Dr. Walker is basically reminding his  peers.

But it can be a communication minefield out there, based both on what doctors choose to say, and what they choose NOT to say. Two examples:

1. Doctors who speak up (BAD):  The sometimes cardiac surgeon/failed political hopeful/green coffee bean diet pusher Dr. Mehmet Oz encouraged his talk show audiences to eat what he enthusiastically calls “Libido-Boosting Super Foods That Will Save Your Marriage!!!”  Oh, please. . . . 

2. Doctors who don’t speak up (WORSE):  Respected physician/diplomat/researcher Dr. Deborah Birx  (Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator for 11 months) refused to respond during a televised April 2020 COVID press briefing when Trump asked her directly about the alleged benefits of his goofy idea to inject COVID patients with disinfectants. Her decision that day to sit cowering miserably in her chair instead of swiftly and clearly correcting his dangerous misinformation is painful to watch (below).

And far worse, it also led to TIME magazine’s report that, following Trump’s controversial ramblings, incidents of accidental poisonings from household disinfectants in that  month of April 2020 were 121% higher in the U.S. compared to April of the previous year.

 

But if the general public can’t trust expert physicians like the eminent Dr. Birx to step up to protect them, who then can they trust?

In today’s America, the poster child for this loss of trust crisis has to be RFK Jr. – Trump’s shockingly unqualified pick as the new head of the HHS.  The Politico investigation that Dr. Walker cited (above), asked why the American Medical Association (which “donates millions of dollars to US candidates each election”) was strangely silent on this appointment. But instead of weighing in and speaking up on behalf of patients and their physicians, the AMA response was:

“We asked our lobbyists if they thought RFK Jr. would be nominated to run the HHS and they said ‘NO’. The idea made everybody laugh because he has no qualifications to run HHS.”

And as Dr. Walker asks:

“Why is it Bobby Kennedy’s lack of credentials, lack of expertise, lack of basic knowledge about the health agencies under his purview that are exactly what Americans find so appealing about him and his views?”   

Americans trust RFK Jr. more than they trust their own doctors? How is that even possible?

Utterly coincidentally, while Dr. Walker was writing his essay for OffCall, I too was pondering similar loss of trust issues here on Heart Sisters.

In last Sunday’s post, I wrote about how distressing it has been to see the baseless theories of uninformed extremists, anti-science celebrities, conspiracy theorists, medical contrarians and other nonsense-peddlers flooding the general public. As I reminded my readers:

“There is simply no such thing as ‘what your doctor doesn’t want you to know’!”

Meanwhile, Dr. Walker cites research that suggested only 40% of Americans now trust their physicians and their hospital systems.

(Here in Canada, by the way, those trust scores appear to be significantly higher. In the new 2025 Health and Media Tracking Survey conducted by the Canadian Medical Association, our year-over-year trust in physicians remains stable with 80 per cent of Canadians saying they trust physicians most to provide accurate health information, followed closely by pharmacists and nurses – both at 79 per cent).

Yet the same survey also revealed that more Canadians are now  encountering rampant health misinformation, and that trend is having direct consequences on negative health outcomes.

It found, for example, that 43 per cent of Canadians are highly susceptible to believing misinformation, while another 35 per cent are moderately susceptible. In this year’s survey, more than one-third of Canadians say they have avoided recommended medical treatments due to false online information (up six percentage points from 2024).

I hasten to add here, however, that not all health advice patients find online is false.

I wouldn’t buy a new coffee grinder, for example, without Googling features, benefits, costs, reviews – so of course I will also look up far more important issues like my own health concerns. That unfortunate  “Don’t Google It” campaign ship has sailed.

In fact, I often tell my Heart Smart Women presentation audiences that if only the first Emerg doc I met (the one who misdiagnosed my “widow maker“ heart attack as acid reflux before sending me away) had bothered to ask Dr. Google what  “central chest pain/nausea/sweating/pain down left arm” means, there’s only one search result possible – and that would have been myocardial infarction – NOT acid reflux.

If doctors truly don’t want their patients to seek health information online, they need to do this: create a prescription pad-like  list of credible online health resource links that they will feel comfortable sharing with every patient. Mayo Clinic is my own go-to resource for all things medical, and the independent evidence-based Consumer Reports Health site is also useful for patients whose lack of trust includes mainstream therapies like pharmaceuticals. See also: “I’m just not a pill person!”

And if you’re an American who is no longer able to view your own federal government’s public health websites, Health Canada 🇨🇦 offers an extensive wealth of sound scientific and medical resource topics ranging from drugs to diseases, product recalls, mental health support, medical research updates, safety alerts and so much more.

Dr. Walker lists some of the concerns that specifically apply to American physicians and their hospitals, adding:

“Patients have every right to be suspicious of a system so dysfunctional as to deny them care in the name of profit. Look at the behavior of drug manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers, insurance companies, and hospitals — they all prioritize profits over patient care.”

I’d also add to that ‘suspicious’ list two years of COVID backlash, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Threads which no longer provide fact-checking, algorithms that influence which online content we see or not, tech developments like AI, overworked and under-supported clinicians, and so many other contributors to further demoralizing of both patients and doctors.

Hands image: Geralt, Pixabay

♥

NOTE #1:  Dr. Walker is the co-founder of OffCall, an online resource whose noble mission is to reverse burnout among physicians.

NOTE #2:  I wrote more about doctor-patient relationships and communication in my book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”  (Johns Hopkins University Press).  You can ask for it at your local library or bookshop (please support your favourite independent neighbourhood booksellers, or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon – or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price).

Q:  What might help to restore public trust in our doctors and healthcare systems?

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