DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUMENT MEASURING PATIENTS' TRUST IN THEIR DOCTORS: TRUST IN PHYSICIAN SCALE

Trust is a fundamental element of the patient-physician relationship (Emanuel, 1995; Rolfe, Cash-Gibson, Car, Sheikh, McKinstry, 2014), but when there is no trust between doctor and patient, there no therapeutic alliance, adherence to therapy decreses (Mainous, 2005) and patients were found to have a disparaging attitude towards medical institutionals (Sandu, Cojocaru, Gavrilovici & Oprea, 2013). Because it is important to have trustworthy relationships between doctors and their patients, interventions are needed to improve trust in individual doctors or associated groups of doctors. The aim of the study is to develop a measurement tool for patient-physician trust and to assess the psychometric properties of this instrument, thereby providing a reliable tool, that could help hospital managers and doctors to understand patients' needs, values, and expectations, and one that could help researchers to assess whether trust in doctors varies according to patient profile (Leisen & Hyman, 2001). Our model is tested on a sample of 116 participants, a heterogeneous group of people coming from private companies and public institutions. Confirmatory factor analysis is used, which resulted in 2 dimensions/subscales, with 6 items for the competence dimension and 3 items the for benevolence dimension. The study proves the scale's convergent and discriminatory validity, internal consistencies and composite reliability. This scale does not assess predictive validity. This instrument could provide appropriate feedback on the efficiency of medical intervention (Hair, Black, Babin & Anderson, 2010) and be used as a simple valid and reliable measurement tool to assess trust relationships between patients and their doctors. Future studies should assess the predictive validity of this scale.