About the Essence of Trust: Tell the Truth and Let Me Choose—I Might Trust You

Abstract

Trust is critical to the success of health care. We witness a diversification of trust constructs which is due to the context specificity of trust and the popularity of trust in marketing, public, and political debate. This diverse use of trust leads to confusion. To contribute to the dissolution of this confusion, I propose that the essence of trust follows Tell the truth and let me choose—I might trust you. Inferring from empirical and theoretical work, I argue that the conceptual framework of trust is comprised of: communication, truthful information, autonomy, alternatives, and no guarantee. This oversimplification aims to stimulate a debate about the common denominator of existing conceptual frameworks of trust in health care. By refining and agreeing on the core of trust in health care, we will be able to improve debate, improve comparability among trust studies, and improve understandability of policy recommendations to foster trust in health care.