Factors Causing Patient's Trust in Nurse from Patient's Perspective

Although trust has long been recognized as an important element of patient-nurse relationship, it has seldom been studied and, therefore, there is limited knowledge about it. Explaining factors causing this trust becomes very important when its various positive consequences are taken into consideration. The present study was carried out to explore and explain theoretically the factors led up to patient’s trust in nurse. Patients and Grounded Theory approach was adopted in this study. Data was collected from 15 patients hospitalized in various wards of three academic hospitals in Uromia using semi-structured interviews. The method proposed by Strauss and Corbin was used for data analysis. The findings of this study revealed that two categories namely nurse’s professional characteristics and ethical principles can help to theoretically explain the concept of trust. Patient’s trust in nurse is an important and complex phenomenon. Therefore, nurses have to develop and reinforce some professional characteristics in themselves and consider some ethical principles in order to attain this trust.