Trust is an interesting thing. When you give trust to someone else, it’s pretty much like you’re saying, “I feel comfortable giving you power over some part of my life.” Think about it, there’s probably no stronger trust out there than the trust a child has in his or her parents. The child is fully confident that the parent will be able to properly feed, clothe, teach, love and respect them. As a result, the child agrees to let their parents have control over those parts of their lives.
Plenty of other relationships require trust. What about the friend that you confide a secrete or personal bit of information to. Once you’ve shown your trust by telling them something important, you’ve now given them power to do whatever they want with that information. They could either keep your secrete in confidence, spread it to everyone they see, or even use that information to hurt you. Once you’ve decided to trust someone, you’re power over what they can do with that part of your life you’ve shared with them is now out of your control. You’ve given that power and control to them.
The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because of my experiences in medical school. Lots of people that I’ve interacted with have put a great amount of trust in me, and they’ve done so simply because I’m a medical student. People have opened up to me very personal parts of their lives, their minds, their actions, their habits, their thoughts, and even their bodies. They’ve told and shown me things that they would never show their closest friend or relative. Any why have they done it? Because they trust that I will be able to use that information to help them and that I won’t abuse the trust they are giving me.
Now, trust can often be misplaced. In the example of my work as a medical student, people have put a lot more trust in me than I think I deserve. Even though I tell people I’m a medical student, I don’t think they really understand how little of medicine I really know at the present time. I mean, people tell me the most intimate parts of their lives, not realizing that I have no idea what’s wrong with them. Not only that, but at the stage I’m at in med school right now everything I do is just for my own practice, it has no impact on the treatment of the patient at all. It’s kind of scary to think about how trust can be so easily won just by wearing a short white coat.
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1 comment:
Amen, brother. I think even you would be amazed what people try to talk to the pharmacist about while trying to avoid a visit to the doctor. You put the coat on and suddenly you're the surgeon general. It's all part of the education, though- a motivation to make yourself worthy of that trust.
I think people inherently want to trust others. Personal experiences and news stories build walls, though, that inhibit that natural inclination. Aside from parents and children, it's almost as if the physician-patient relationship is the last frontier of natural trust in human relationships. If we ever lose that one, what a society we will be!
Keep up the good work, Rob!
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