What Does the Chinese Public Care About with Regard to Primary Care Physicians: Trustworthiness or Competence?

Autor: Yang Cao, Egui Zhu
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Medicina
Volume 55
Issue 8
Medicina; Volume 55; Issue 8; Pages: 455
Medicina, Vol 55, Iss 8, p 455 (2019)
ISSN: 1010-660X
DOI: 10.3390/medicina55080455
Popis: Background and Objective: China has launched a series of reforms to enhance primary care. The aims of these reforms are to strengthen the functionality of primary care to encourage patients to use primary care. Patients&rsquo
trust in physicians is important in clinical medicine
however, little is known about how Chinese patients&rsquo
preferences relate to their trust in primary care physicians. This study&rsquo
s objectives are to measure the Chinese public&rsquo
s trust in primary care physicians and to characterize reasons of their preferences for health care. Materials and Methods: This quantitative study comprises a face-to-face survey with a convenience sample (n = 273) of people visiting community health centers or stations (CHCSs) in Wuhan, China. We measured the patients&rsquo
preferences for the different level of hospitals and their trust in physicians, as well as the reasons of the patients&rsquo
preferences, using a Chinese version of the Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale and other variables (such as demographics, health status, and hospital preference). Results: Approximately two thirds (68.6%) of the participants had experienced a mild or chronic disease in the year before the survey, but only 26.4% preferred to visit CHCSs in such cases. The negative factors related to this lack of preference are the physicians&rsquo
competence (odds ratio [OR] = 0.250), the medical equipment (OR = 0.301), and the popularity of hospitals (OR = 0.172). The positive factors were ease of access (OR = 2.218) and affordability (OR = 1.900). The participants expressed a moderate trust in physicians in CHCSs (score of 3.02 out of 5). There is no association between the patients&rsquo
trust and their hospital preference (r = 0.019, p = 0.859). Of the participants, 92 suggested that the physicians in CHCSs should improve in terms of their competence (n = 53), attitude (n = 35), and/or medical ethics (n = 16). Conclusions: This study&rsquo
s results suggest that patients consider improving physicians&rsquo
competence to be more important and urgent than improving those physicians&rsquo
trustworthiness in terms of reconstructing Chinese primary care. Improving the physicians&rsquo
competence would not only reduce the barriers that patients experience regarding CHCSs, but would also increase their trust in the physicians.
Databáze: OpenAIRE