The phenomenology of trust: A Schutzian analysis of the social construction of knowledge by gynae-oncology patients

Abstract

Trust is essential to healthcare due to its facilitating positive patient experience in the face of vulnerability and uncertainty. Recent research into patient trust notes the relative importance of interpersonal communication compared with perceptions of the system. Yet there is little understanding of why this is the case and, in spite of this predominance of the interactive for trust, there remains a paucity of research harnessing phenomenological theory and methods. In redressing these deficiencies, this paper shows how the work of Schutz illuminates and explains the primacy of interpersonal communication for trust due to the concreteness of inter-subjective experience and relative weakness of abstract knowledge. Because knowledge is ultimately rooted in direct experience, abstract notions must be inferred through complex ideal-typical frameworks and are therefore more tentative. This contributes to an understanding of the inherent rationality of lay decision-making and emphasises the active role of the truster in constructing their beliefs. These themes emerge out of, and are discussed in relation to, qualitative data from interviews with cervical cancer patients.