Effect of Perspective-Taking on Trust Between Doctors and Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

• Published in: Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 708 - 715
• Main Authors: Kong, Linghang, Chen, Yidi, Wang, Lu, Wang, Kaikai, Liu, Chen, Gan, Yiqun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-12-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Communication; Empathy; Experiments; Family Medicine; General Practice; Health Psychology; Intervention; Medical research; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Patients; Personal relationships; Physicians; Questionnaires; Violence; China; Intervention; Trust between doctors and patients; Randomized controlled trial; Perspective-taking
• ISSN: 1068-9583; 1573-3572
• DOI: 10.1007/s10880-022-09935-z

Tension between doctors and patients as a social problem has existed for a long time; thus far, there is no good solution. From the perspective of trust between doctors and patients, this research studies the relieving effect of perspective-taking interventions on the tension between doctors and patients. This study used a randomized, single-blind online experiment. 133 participants were randomly divided into an intervention group (
n
 = 67) and control group (
n
 = 66). Participants were asked to complete writing tasks from the doctor’s perspective. Patients’ trust in doctors was measured at 3 time points: before intervention, immediately after intervention, and 10 days after the intervention. Findings showed a significant interaction effect between time measurement and group. In the intervention group, a pairwise comparison of time measurements showed a significant difference between T1 and T2. Perspective-taking interventions can improve patients’ trust in doctors, but this effect diminishes over time.