Trust relations in health care: an agenda for future research.

PURPOSE

The aim of this paper is to draw together suggestions for future research from the papers and from the discussion that took place at the workshop.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The suggestions are summarised under four broad themes.

FINDINGS

At an international workshop on trust organised by the U.K. MRC Health Services Research Collaboration there was broad agreement that trust was still a salient issue in diverse health care contexts. The workshop proceedings identified a number of important questions for empirical research and several key conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions relating to trust that need to be addressed in support of or alongside this. The collection of papers in this volume starts to address some of these questions.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Considers trust relations in health care from patient, clinical, organisational and policy perspectives.