Trust of society towards selected medical professions – doctors, nurses, paramedics

INTRODUCTION: In Poland is equal access to the health care system, based on the insurance model. It consists of many institutions in which patients can benefit from health services. Help in pre-hospital and outpatient settings is usually performed by doctors, nurses and paramedics. The study is aimed at assessing confidence towards these selected three medical professions and indicating their the most important disadvantages and advantages. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study was conducted among 109 randomly selected people, using the authorial questionnaire. To the statistical analysis was used Kruskal–Wallis test. All results were considered significant at p<0.05. RESULTS: The study was attended by 75 women and 34 men, the average age was 29.63 years (SD±15.62). The most people had contact with a doctor (n=109), and slightly less with a nurse (n=105) and with a paramedic (n=66). In terms of the level of social trust, paramedics was rated the highest (7.81 points, SD±1.84), and slightly below doctors (7.2 points, SD±1.89) and nurses (6.9 points; SD±2.23). The accuracy of diagnosis / therapy (43.1%, n=47) was considered the best advantage among the doctors, among nurses - good contact with the patient (57.8%, n=63), and among paramedics - manual skills (36.7%, n=40). The main disadvantages of physicians were wrong diagnosis and / or therapy (44%; n=48), among nurses - bad contact with the patient (37.6%, n=41), and among paramedics - a low level of knowledge (45%, n=49). There were no statistically significant differences between the three professional groups in terms of advantages (p = 0.957) and disadvantages (p = 0.995). CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that the greatest confidence have paramedics, then doctors and the smallest nurses. Also indicated the most important advantages and disadvantages of people performing selected medical professions.