Study shows trust in doctors fell during COVID-19 pandemic

The number of people who trust doctors dropped steeply during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study says.

Worse, those who lost their faith in medicine are less likely to get vaccinated against COVID or the flu, researchers found.

"Trust in physicians and hospitals can be critical for public health, and restoring the trust that was lost during the pandemic will need to target multiple possible contributors to mistrust," lead researcher Dr. Roy Perlis , director of the Center for Quantitative Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said in a news release.

Medicine became politicized during the pandemic, increasing concerns that the easy trust people once felt for their doctor might have dissipated, researchers said.

To gauge the effect, researchers examined data from 24 waves of internet surveys conducted during and after the pandemic, generally every one to two months between April 2020 and January 2024. All told, the combined data included more than 582,000 responses from more than 443,000 adults in the United States.

The proportion of adults reporting a lot of trust for doctors serving in hospitals decreased from nearly 72% in April 2020 to 40% in January of this year, results show.

People who lost trust in doctors tended to be 25 to 64 years old, female, living in a rural setting, and having a lower educational level and lower income.

These associations persisted even after researchers accounted for partisanship, which shows that the loss of trust wasn't always based on political affiliation, results show.

Greater trust also increased the odds that a person would get a life-protecting vaccine:

4.9 times higher odds of a COVID vaccination.

5.1 times greater odds of a flu vaccination.

3.6 times higher odds of a COVID vaccine booster.

"In every sociodemographic group in this survey study, trust declined substantially over the course of the pandemic, with lower trust likely representing a barrier to getting vaccinated or receiving boosters," Perlis said. "Strategies may be needed to rebuild this trust to achieve public health priorities."

As a follow-up, researchers asked people the reasons for their low levels of trust, using AI to categorize the responses.

People who trusted medicine less tended to question the financial motives of doctors and hospitals, doubt the quality of care, suspect that care was being influenced by other entities or agendas, or perceive discrimination or bias, results show.

"People have different reasons for not trusting doctors and hospitals, and restoring trust will require that we consider those different reasons, rather than adopting a 'one size fits all' approach," Perlis said. "But for us to be ready for the next pandemic, winning back this trust is imperative."

The new study was published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open .

More information

The University of California-San Francisco has more about patient-doctor communication and trust .

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