ObjectiveTo examine whether patients’ trust in the health care professional is associated with health outcomes.Study selectionWe searched 4 major electronic databases for studies that reported quantitative data on the association between trust in the health care professional and health outcome. We screened the full-texts of 400 publications and included 47 studies in our meta-analysis.Data extraction and data synthesisWe conducted random effects meta-analyses and meta-regressions and calculated correlation coefficients with corresponding 95% confidence intervals. Two interdependent researchers assessed the quality of the included studies using the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guidelines.ResultsOverall, we found a small to moderate correlation between trust and health outcomes (r = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.19–0.29). Subgroup analyses revealed a moderate correlation between trust and self-rated subjective health outcomes (r = 0.30, 0.24–0.35). Correlations between trust and objective (r = -0.02, -0.08–0.03) as well as observer-rated outcomes (r = 0.10, -0.16–0.36) were non-significant. Exploratory analyses showed a large correlation between trust and patient satisfaction and somewhat smaller correlations with health behaviours, quality of life and symptom severity. Heterogeneity was small to moderate across the analyses.ConclusionsFrom a clinical perspective, patients reported more beneficial health behaviours, less symptoms and higher quality of life and to be more satisfied with treatment when they had higher trust in their health care professional. There was evidence for upward bias in the summarized results. Prospective studies are required to deepen our understanding of the complex interplay between trust and health outcomes.

Psychotherapy has been shown to be effective, but efforts to prove specific effects by placebo-controlled trials have been practically and conceptually hampered. We propose that adopting open/hidden designs from placebo research would offer a possible way to establish specificity in psychotherapy. Therefore, we tested the effects of providing opposing treatment rationales in an online expressive writing intervention on affect in healthy subjects. Results indicate that it was possible to conduct the expressive writing intervention both covertly and openly, but that participants in the hidden administration condition did not fully benefit from the otherwise effective expressive writing intervention in the long-run. Effect sizes between open and hidden administration groups were comparable to pre-post effect sizes of the intervention. While this finding is important for the understanding of psychotherapy's effects per se, it also proves that alternative research approaches to establish specificity are feasible and informative in psychotherapy research.Trial registration: German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00009428

Is having a trusting doctor-patient relationship better for patients’ health?

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