Abstract
BACKGROUND: Patients who trust their providers have better health outcomes; a trusting patient-provider relationship is needed for optimal management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic autoimmune disease.
PURPOSES/METHODS: An observational study design (N = 100 RA patients) was used to:
1. assess associations between patients' trust and demographic factors;
2. determine if a patient's trust in his/her provider changes over time;
3. investigate associations between sources of information and patients' trust in their providers. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's partial moment correlation, two-sample t tests, paired t tests, and linear regression were used during data analysis.
RESULTS: Patients' trust in their providers decreased over time. Less-educated persons and those who accessed information from the Internet reported less trust in their providers. Patients who consulted a larger number of information sources rated trust in their provider more positively.
CONCLUSION: RA patients' trust in providers is a dynamic construct influenced by education and health information.