Surgical Patients’ Views on Physicians’ Communication Skills in Building Trust: A Cross-sectional Descriptive Study

Abstract

The objective of the study is to determine the hospitalized surgical patients’ opinions about the communication skills of the physicians in building trust and the factors affecting them. 201 patients staying at the surgical unit constituted the sample of study. The data collection form consisted of demographic data and the Scale of Trust Communication in the Patient-Physician Relationship. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, Bonferroni correction and Spearman correlation coefficient have been used to analyze the data. The Scale of Trust Communication in the Patient-Physician Relationship total point average was 86.15 ± 10.34. A meaningful relationship was found between the total score and trust in the physician health care attitude, trust in the physician decisions and the patient’s behavior regarding the payment status. The trust communication average score of the patients was high, and the total scale point average increased as the sub-scale averages increased.