IntroductionMedical services are commonly treated as one of the fundamental services, that contribute to the building of human capital. Their role is mainly instrumental, as they aim at improving and maintaining good health of people. Medical services belong to a group of professional services. The term is used to define complex services that require maximum matching to individual clients' needs and ones that need to be provided in constant stream of transactions (Lovelock, 1984). The complexity of medical services, characteristic for the entire group of professional services, results from a multitude of complex stages that are to be realized during a meeting of service provision. However, what differentiates medical services from other types of professional services is the significance of consequences that a patient may suffer in case of a failed result of the service process (disability, injury to health and decrease in the quality of life or even its loss).Furthermore, the nature of medical services is a strongly interpersonal one, and a patient-physician relationship is accompanied by information asymmetry and a principalagent relationship. These phenomena were investigated by many researchers on a number of occasions, starting with Arrow (1979), through Sloan (2001), to Polish authors (Krot, Rudawska, 2010, 2016).On the other hand, research related to the fundamental construct of the relation, i.e. trust with the phenomenon of client satisfaction, was the focus of studies of the authors researching service sector (Doney, Cannon, 1997; Lovelock, Wirtz, 2004). They, however, less frequently referred directly to the health care sector (Hall et al., 2001; Thom, 2001). Studies that refer to the trust in doctors as a key component while shaping patents' satisfaction with healthcare remain in their infancy in Polish health sector. Decision makers and health politicians are just beginning to comprehend the true complexity of the process of building satisfaction in a doctor-patient relationship and its meaning for quality improvements. As public understanding of this complexity and its interrelationship with trust develops, studies dedicated to the structure of trust will gain more attention. Enhancing the specificity of such research is a crucial element in translating the scientific potential of trustrelated studies into real value in improving patient care in mainstream clinical practice. Therefore, the objective of the paper is to analyse the role of trust in physicians in the process of building patient satisfaction, while the trust is analysed in three dimensions: physicians' competence, honesty and kindness. Research results presented in this paper concern health care system in Poland and they are of a representative nature.1.Literature overviewAn illness and a resultant health care need usually have random and difficult to foresee character (except for deliberate exposure to risk factors and a genetic susceptibility detectable in tests). Uncertainty, apart from the health need itself, also concerns the required forms of therapy and their availability as well as - typically probabilistic - results of such therapy. Once a health need arises, the situation a patient finds himself/herself in is completely different from the ones, in which the patient assesses alternative market offerors as a customer. Considering objective diversification of medical services, one needs to conclude that the above observations chiefly refer to prevention of the second and third stage, thus to such patient's health situations that require medical intervention or rehabilitation on account of an already commenced disease process. The more complex the patient's medical problem is, the higher the probability of an informational gap existing between the parties to a service process.The consequence of a relative patient's incompetence in matters of their own health is their need to rely an opinion of a service provider (represented by medical personnel), which significantly limits decision-making sovereignty with regard to the purchase of a given service, its type and structure. …