Patients who trust their providers have better health outcomes; a trusting patient-provider relationship is needed for optimal management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic autoimmune disease.
An observational study design (N = 100 RA patients) was used to:
: Patients' trust in their providers decreased over time. Less-educated persons and those who accessed information from the Internet reported less trust in their providers. Patients who consulted a larger number of information sources rated trust in their provider more positively.
RA patients' trust in providers is a dynamic construct influenced by education and health information.