Abstract

KIE: The meaning of trust in the physician patient relationship is briefly explored in general, in the context of Britain's Gillick controversy concerning minors and contraception, and in the context of 'alternative' versus conventional medicine. Cooper defines three distinct kinds of trust: (A) an act of entrusting a physician with responsibility, (B) an assumption regarding the physician's trustworthiness, and (C) an epistemic attitude involving confidence in the physician's abilities. He also identifies language factors which confuse the distinctions between the three types of trust. Concluding with a discussion of what the two sides in the Gillick dispute mean by trust, Cooper argues that the disagreement concerns the limits of trust (A), and not (B), the trustworthiness of physicians.