In Part 2 of our conversation, Dr. Renata Schiavo digs into the science of trust and explains what her research has found about the dimensions of trust, and the drivers of trust. You’ll want to take notes! Check out the links to the research in our notes below.
Trust. It’s such a complex phenomenon. It can be hard to wrap our heads around and work with in concrete terms. But there’s been innovation lately in this space. Today, in part two of my interview with Dr. Renata Schiavo, Dr. Schiavo explains what her research has found about the dimensions of trust and the drivers of trust.
Hi everybody, this is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, ranked #20 of the Top 100 Podcasts in Social Sciences. Giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement, experience, and satisfaction since 2017. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator with expertise in communication and education. I’m here to dig into some of what we might take for granted about communication in our professional lives. If you want to strengthen the work you can do in your professional sphere, this is a place for you because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make. If you value this show, the stories, the inspiration, the research, I’ve got good news: I can help your organization. Visit h-cpartners.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Now, this is part two of my interview with Dr. Scavo. In Part one, she shared some lessons learned in health communication from COVID, and then set the stage for the need to rebuild public trust in health and science information. So I’ll put the link in the show notes in case you missed part one. Today, we get down to concrete details that may help you think about trust in new ways in your own practice.
Anne Marie: You talked about something that I think is really compelling in helping us wrap our heads around trust. And that’s the thought that it could be measured. Have you found that there are different dimensions of trust that you can measure?
Renata: Yeah, I think that there are both different dimensions and different drivers of trust. And this tends to be community specific, patient group specific, population specific. They’re influence by culture, by previous experience. But in general terms, every time that we engage with any kind of communities or patient group or patient in our clinical practice, we’re looking at: the trust in institution, whether the community member or the patient trust or not, our institution, the institution we represent; trusting in the individual who is the messenger, either the public health professional or the clinician; trusting the process being implemented to get to a certain recommendation; trusting the product, or the behavior we recommend; and trusting our own competency and the overall scientific information.
We saw, for example, during the pandemic that the involvement, the engagement, of Black churches in basically speaking about immunization within the Black community, was very important because this was a trusted messenger. And so the issue in that particular case was having a messenger that had connection, ties with the community. That the community could trust. In other cases, the issue may be the trust in institutions, or in the process we have followed to bring this recommendation to a specific community or patient group. And therefore this process doesn’t reflect cultural values maybe, and they may not be trusted. Or maybe the product itself in other in other in other situations. So we really need to take this approach in a you know in a situation-specific manner and also community- and patient group-specific manner.
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Anne Marie: And thanks for that. I mean it’s such a helpful way to kind of segment down trust. Are we thinking about trust in institutions right now? Are we thinking about trust in individuals right now? Are we thinking about trusts in services or processes? Are we talking about trust in a product or trust in information? And chances are, all of those at some point. But as a practitioner to have a framework like that to kind of break it down I think could be very very helpful as you’re trying to negotiate a relationship with the patient that you’re talking to, or you’re considering writing something to a group that you are engaging with. That thinking about it, breaking it down in those ways, could be helpful to kind of wrap your head around this enormous issue that is trust.
Renata: We can’t ask for trust. We need to be trustworthy. We need to accept that trust can be built only across interactions and over time. And this interaction quality is also very important because trust is linked to so many different drivers. And some of the drivers are reliability. We say we will do something, we fulfill our promises. Some of the drivers is this concept of benevolence: that the people can actually believe that we have their best interest in mind, that there is something in it for them. So some others are things that we do every day in trusting relationship: we’re open, we’re authentic, we communicate with empathy, we engage the community, it’s an exchange of information. So I think in addition to the dimensions of trust that we just discussed, I think also understanding that trust cannot be built overnight. That it is built over multiple interactions. That we cannot ask for trust, but we need to show ourselves as trustworthy. And trustworthiness is linked to all of this concepts I just mentioned: authenticity, empathy, benevolence, reliability, and so on. And those are drivers of trust.
Anne Marie: And this is all tied back to communication, because communication is how people relate to one another. And what you are talking about are relational elements between healthcare professionals or health professionals and everybody else. So what do you see as your next steps from here?
Renata: So I definitely want to continue to explore the science of trust, both through my work at the journal and in practice and in research. And more specifically to continue to implement the model, and invite everyone on the show to actually measure trust–at the beginning of an intervention, at the beginning of a research effort–so that they can actually assess where they are in terms of the trust or mistrust that people have toward them, toward their institution, or other dimensions. I also would like to become more engaged in connecting our professional community with the lay community, and really learn more from them about what they need in terms of tips, tools, resources, to discern basically evidence-based information versus non–evidence -based information. It’s a very difficult period in time. There are so many voices there. Social media very clearly amplifies our ability to spread misinformation. So a lot of people are confused. And so it would be great to learn from them about solutions, too. For us to provide tools, resources, tips, information to help them discern between trustworthy sources and non-trustworthy sources, and ultimately act upon the evidence-based information.
Anne Marie: Dr. Renata Schiavo thank you so much for coming back to the show and talking about this enormous, timely, important issue of trust.
Renata: Thank you so much for having me again. It’s great to see you.
Anne Marie: It’s wonderful to see you too.
Thanks again to Dr. Renata Schiavo for visiting and for her insights. Don’t miss Part one of our interview, where she sets the stage for us and discusses important lessons learned from COVID. Enjoying this show? If your team needs help tackling big issues on health communication, I’d love to support you. Visit healthcommunicationpartners .com to learn more about working with me. This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, Audio Engineering and Music from Joe Liebel. Additional music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners .com