Trust in U.S. Doctors and Hospitals Has Declined Since COVID Pandemic

A 2024 survey study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open found that Americans trust in medical doctors and hospitals declined significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ The 2020 pandemic signified a turning point in the public’s trust in the medical profession that was previously deemed to be a trustworthy profession. In 2023, a Gallup poll showed that the public’s perception of physician ethics was considerably below the pre-pandemic baseline.²

Significant Rise in Americans’ Distrust Across All Demographics Includes Vaccinations

There were 443,455 people who responded to the survey study aged 18 years or older residing in the U.S with state-level representative quotas for race and ethnicity, age, and gender. Results from the survey showed that trust in physicians and hospitals decreased substantially over the course of the pandemic from 71.5 percent in April 2020 to 40.1 percent in January 2024.³

Roy Perlis, MD of Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study said:

We were surprised by the magnitude of the shift. I think early in the pandemic trust likely increased above pre-pandemic levels, but it certainly came way down over the course of the pandemic. We as physicians and public health officials can talk until we’re blue in the face about things like vaccination and other public health behaviors. But if people don’t trust us, it doesn’t matter—we’re talking to ourselves.”⁴

The survey also found that a lower level of trust in physicians and hospitals was associated with decreased likelihood of receiving COVID shots, as well as influenza vaccines. These associations were not explained by political affiliation.⁵

David Lazer, PhD, professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern University and a researcher on the study commented on the distrust in physicians:

It is obviously a very, very sizable decline. It is striking that we saw distrust predicted future vaccination status. While we can’t be sure that this is a causal relationship, it is consistent with the possibility that distrust is a factor in lower vaccination rates.⁶

Medical Doctors Blame Conflicting Public Health Messages For the Distrust

Some medical professionals who were not part of the study were asked their opinion on why they believe Americans do not trust doctors after the COVID pandemic. Some physicians believe that elected officials changed the narrative of the pandemic from a public health emergency into a political event. Amesh Adalja, MD, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who has treated COVID cases, said:

I don’t believe that the lack of trust is primarily the fault of the physicians and hospitals, but the fault of the politicians who first evaded the issue, then abdicated their responsibilities and eventually used the pandemic as just another partisan issue to wield against their political opponents.⁷

Others believe that the conflicting messaging from public health agencies created a distrust in physicians and the medical establishment. Carlos del Rio, MD, associate dean at Emory University School of Medicine, said:

We told people first no need for masks, then we said use a mask, then we said use two masks. Science evolved, but people don’t understand that, they want black-and-white recommendations. Unfortunately, an evolving pandemic with a novel virus does not do that.⁸

Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD, a health policy and management professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, added…

Medical and public health organizations need to listen to concerns, reflect on them and find ways to… rethink approaches in light of the pandemic.⁹

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