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- Title
The relevance of different trust models for representation in patient organizations: conceptual considerations.
- Authors
Gerhards, Helene; Jongsma, Karin; Schicktanz, Silke
- Abstract
<bold>Background: </bold>Trust within organizations is important for ensuring members' acceptance of the organization's activities and to expand their scope of action. Remarkably, Patient Organizations (POs) that often both function as a forum for self-help and represent patients on the health-political level, have been understudied in this respect. This paper analyzes the relation between trust and representation in POs. We distinguish between two models of representation originating from political theory: the trustee and delegate model and between two types of trust: horizontal and vertical trust.<bold>Methods: </bold>Our theoretical approach is illustrated with an analysis of 13 interviews with representatives of German POs.<bold>Results: </bold>We have found that the delegate model requires horizontal trust and the trustee model vertical trust. Both models: horizontal/delegate and vertical/trustee exist within single POs.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The representation process within POs demands a balancing act between inclusion of affected persons and strategically aggregating a clear-cut political claim. Trust plays in that process of coming from individual wishes to collective and political standpoints a major role both in terms of horizontal as well as vertical trust. Horizontal trust serves the communication between affected members, and vertical trust allows representatives to be decisive.
- Subjects
GERMANY; PATIENTS' associations; GROUP decision making; PATIENT participation; PATIENT representatives; TRUST; MEDICAL care; ETHICS; INTERVIEWING; PATIENT advocacy; MATHEMATICAL models of psychology; SUPPORT groups; QUALITATIVE research
- Publication
BMC Health Services Research, 2017, Vol 17, p1
- ISSN
1472-6963
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1186/s12913-017-2368-z