How can you trust your doctor’s recommendations?
That’s the question that emerged from a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In it, researchers examined the data from a sample of over 13,000 U.S. doctors between 2004 and 2015, as well as the data on medical decisions made by health care professionals.
In some cases, the data showed doctors were more likely to agree with the doctors’ recommendations, while in other cases the data indicated the opposite.
This led the authors to conclude that doctors had more in common with each other than they did with the general population.
The results are striking.
The authors say that doctors were “much more likely” to follow recommendations made by a patient or a health care professional than they were to follow their own medical judgment.
The study authors also say that the results do not support the notion that physicians are somehow less trustworthy than the general public.
“These results do nothing to refute the claim that doctors are less trustworthy,” they write.
The article is part of the Journal’s “Medical Knowledge and Practice” series.
