Korean Patients’ Perception of Trust in the Hospital and Medical Staffs’ Social Status

The level of people's trust in medical staffs, such as doctors, nurses and pharmacists, and the level of public perception of their social status are very im-portant factors in raising the level of public health. Trust in healthcare-service providers increase pa-tient adherence, maintains treatment continuity, synchronizes preventive testing, maintains physi-cian-patient relationships, and enables efficient use of medical budgets (1). However, medical doctors are able to reduce their interaction time per patient in order to treat as many patients as possible within their limited consulting times. In consequence, pa-tients regularly spend time in the waiting space for just a few minutes of consultation. Moreover, they have to put up with the poor attitude often shown by physicians and receive only minimal or no expla-nation of their condition and proposed treatment (2).