Rebuilding patient–physician trust in China

Patient-physician trust is the foundation of clinical medicine. Yet in many health-care settings around the world, trust has eroded among structural and social transformations. In transitioning health systems, some patients develop mistrust for physicians' motives as inequalities in health care expand and close ties between pharmaceutical companies and physicians are revealed. At the same time, trust might be undermined by social change, such as an expanding middle class with increasing expectations of medical care. Patient-physician mistrust has become deeply embedded in medical clinics within a wide variety of contexts.