In the age of social media, of news available 24 hours a day, of artificial intelligence, when it comes to acquiring health information, the doctor is always the most reliable source.
Thinking like this – according to an article just published on Jamathe journal of the American Medical Association which is considered one of the most authoritative in the sector – the 95% of Americans. And trust is bipartisan, regardless of political orientation and social and cultural differences. Dedicate a profile to the article today Doctormaeverochethe “anti-hoax” portal of the FNOMCeOthe National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists, where citizens can find health information based on the most up-to-date scientific evidence.
«This result is not surprising – he says Filippo Anelli, who is the President of FNOMCeO – and matches the Italian data. According to a survey conducted by the Piepoli Institute and presented at our conference last October on the National Health Service, for example, trust in your family doctor is maximum, superior to that placed in any other figure or institution. It is good, therefore, that the doctor is the point of reference also when it comes to acquiring health information, to determine, together with him, one’s choices. As, moreover, demonstrated by a previous survey conducted for us by Censis: 87.1% of Italians declared that they trusted their general practitioner (the share reached 90% among those over 65 years of age), 72% of choose it as your preferred source of health information. It is important that even now, after having gone through a pandemic with consequent infodemic, this trust has grown further.”
But let’s go back to the analysis, conducted on a representative sample of Americans and published in Jama. A well-known health policy non-profit organization in the United States – once called Kaiser Family Foundation and now simply KFF – monitored citizens’ exposure to health information and beliefs about Covid -19, gun violence and reproductive health. Given the hot topics, with non-negligible political implications today in the United States, it is likely that this survey will have a strong echo in that country. However, a team of researchers has tracked down where people get their news and which sources of health information they trust.
The first piece of news is, in fact, that we trust doctors, regardless of our political orientation. To be more precise, 95% of people who say they vote for the US Democratic Party said they trust their doctor when asking for health advice. The same goes for those who vote for the Republican Party in US elections.
Most people have one discreet trust in the health information coming from the Government, but the perception of the credibility of different government institutions varies depending on the political inclination of citizens. For example, 87% of Democratic voters said they trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC is a federal agency that deals with public health prevention and surveillance in the USA) but this trust is felt by less than 50% of Republicans. So – calculator in hand – if half of US citizens vote Republican and half of them don’t trust the indications they receive from a body like the CDC, we can think that one in four Americans might not follow the government’s recommendations regarding Health.
The pervasiveness of false news on health issues is strong: 96% of participants in the survey published in JAMA report having heard of the (false) relationship between vaccines against measles-mumps-rubella and autism or of their effectiveness ( never tried) of ivermectin against Covid-19. On the one hand, however, many of those subjected to incorrect information do not believe in its veracity. On the other hand – and this is the real good news – the last link in the communication chain, the closest to the person, is the doctor. And this is a great barrier to misinformation, as balanced and evidence-based information comes from him that derives from the most rigorous scientific research.
But what causes trust in the doctor? Other studies, cited by the Dottomaeveroche team, explain this to us.
«The first – explain the anti-hoax doctors – notes that, in addition to their “knowledge”, the “know-how” of doctors and researchers is appreciated, those skills that allow them to solve problems. Furthermore – and another recent study told us this – the doctor prescribes tests and more generally a diagnostic process to ensure that his suspicions are correct: think for example of a diagnostic hypothesis that needs confirmation through an examination blood tests or an MRI. We patients perceive these tests as confirmation of the doctor’s individualized approach to our problems and we see the overall treatment strategy proposed by our doctor also as a synthesis between his knowledge, competence, and his professional experience, his experience ».
«This research – he concludes Rings – provide a scientific basis for the trust that patients place in their doctor. A trust that is the basis of that therapeutic alliance which is, in turn, one of the determining factors of treatment: so much so that, as another study shows, a continuous relationship with a doctor prolongs life. A trust which is the awareness that the doctor, through his particular activities of anamnesis, diagnosis and prescription, puts the unique mix of knowledge, skills, experience and ethical principles that characterizes him at the service of the citizen, to carry out, together with him, the better choices for their health and thus make the rights to self-determination and the protection of health itself enforceable. This is true appropriateness, which no guideline, or decree, or algorithm will ever be able to impose.”
