Trust is a popular topic nowadays, but it also seems to be under unprecedented pressure. The word is all the buzz within marketing and branding and is something that every organization wants to achieve and maintain. It is also centrally critical to the patient-physician relationship.
For those reasons, and more, Proof Strategies studies trust via our annual CanTrust Index. One of the largest annual studies of trust in Canada, the study is conducted in January and uses a 7-point scale to assess varying levels. The recent three years of pandemic have been a particularly interesting period to study trust in our health care system and those who work within it.
Canadians love to boast about our health care system, especially compared to the U.S., and overall, we have high levels of trust. The pandemic has put that under pressure.
When asked which institutions Canadians are willing to trust to operate competently and effectively and do the right thing – our health care system got the top score, ahead of the Canadian military, the Supreme Court and the education system. However, that trust does seem to be eroding slightly year over year, dropping from 63 per cent to 58 per cent in the past three years. This shift isn’t cause for alarm bells, but is certainly something to keep watching.
Trust levels in Canada’s health care system vary across the country, possibly resulting from the disparity of services from province to province. Atlantic Canadians are seven per cent less likely to trust the system (coming in at 45 per cent compared to Ontario, the most trusted province, at 58 per cent). Further, trust levels differ between generations. The least trusting are millennials coming in at 45 per cent and the most trusting are Boomers at 64 per cent. This latter difference appears throughout our research, with younger people almost always being less trusting.
We know that some of the key issues facing our health care system continue to be wait times, lack of family physicians, nursing shortages and equal and timely access to medications. Some governments appear to be tackling these issues.