Shared-decision-making Behavior in Hospitalized Patients: Investigating the Impact of Patient's Trust in Physicians, Emotional Support, Informational Support, and Tendency to Excuse Using a Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Trust in Medical Research: A Comparative Study among Patients at a Regional Referral Hospital and Community Members in Lira District, Northern Uganda

Events such as the Tuskegee syphilis study shaped how the public perceives and trusts medical research globally. However, few studies have examined trust in medical research in developing countries. We tested the hypothesis that levels of trust may be lower among community members compared to hospitalized persons in Uganda. We enrolled 296 participants in rural northern Uganda, and 148(50%) were from the community, 192(65%) were female. Mean level of trust for medical research was higher among hospitalized persons compared to community members (p = 0.0001). Previous research participation (p = 0.03), and willingness to participate in future research (p = 0.001) were positively associated with trust. Medical personnel should engage more with the communities in which they practice fostering trust in medical research.

A Key Driver of Patient Satisfaction: Interaction of Patients with Personnel Delivering Incontinence Health Technologies

Primary care represents an answer to the growing demand of an ageing population for healthcare services outside the hospital. As a support mechanism of primary care, the distribution of health technologies to chronic patients plays an important role, but it has been investigated from the operational viewpoint only, ignoring the patient's perspective. We explored patient's satisfaction in relation to the distribution processes of incontinence health technologies, investigating its antecedents and isolating the factors driving the satisfaction of patients – which could be leveraged to design better distribution processes for better primary care services. We performed a survey study on 650 patients in primary care services affected by incontinence in Italy, building on the ServQual and Kano models. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) was adopted to analyse the data. Results show that interaction of patients with the personnel delivering the service is the key driver of patient satisfaction: this is an element more important than the operational features of distribution services (such as punctuality/reliability of the service or its flexibility).