LONDON, Mar 22 (Reuters Health) - Nine out of 10 Britons trust their doctor to tell the truth and are satisfied with the way they do their job, according to independent poll findings released Thursday by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Even when reminded of medical controversies like the Alder Hey organ retention report, which found that a hospital in Liverpool collected thousands of organs from the bodies of dead children without informing parents, 84% of the public still say that doctors are doing their job well.
However only 26% said that doctors do their job very well compared with 32% last year.
According to Michele Corrado of MORI, which conducted the poll: "The fall in those saying that doctors do their job very well is statistically significant but certainly does not bear out fears of a crisis of public confidence in doctors."
"The poll conclusively rebuts fears that the medical profession is in the dock or that there is a crisis of public confidence in doctors," the BMA said in a news release.
"Doctors are trusted by the public to an extent that would be the envy of other professions. Only 27% trust business leaders to tell the truth. Journalists and politicians are believed by 18% and 17%, with Government Ministers faring slightly better at 20%."
Doctors topped the list of professions the public trusts to tell the truth--ahead of teachers (86%), the clergy, judges and professors (all 78%) and the police (63%). The equivalent trust rating for doctors last year was 87%.
BMA chairman Ian Bogle, said: "I am delighted with the results of the poll....Patients read about high profile cases and they want action taken against individual bad doctors but they do not make false links between very different kinds of problems and they know that doctors are doing a good job in difficult circumstances."
Bogle hoped politicians, commentators and doctors themselves would absorb the lessons of this poll. Otherwise there was a "danger that if you keep saying that public confidence has been eroded, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
MORI interviewed a representative sample of 1,918 adults in Great Britain in their homes in early March |
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