Losing confidence in medicine in an era of medical expansion?

• Examine how American’s confidence in medicine changes in the past three decades.
• It has declined uniformly across ages, genders, cohorts and income levels.
• Confidence in medicine is related to trust in doctors’ ethics.
• Confidence in medicine is different from obedience to doctors’ authority.
• Public trust in doctors’ ethics may have declined.

Has the expansion of the medical field inspired more or less confidence in medicine among the American public? This study investigates how confidence in medicine has changed over the past three decades, whether this trend is uniform across social groups and which aspects of medicine are most affected. Data are from repeated cross-sectional U.S. General Social Surveys spanning the years 1973–2008, including the 2002 Doctors and Patients Module and the 1998 Pressing Issues in Health and Medical Care Module. Americans’ confidence in medicine has declined continuously over the past three decades, and the extent of this decline did not vary by gender, age group, cohort, or income level. Analysis of differences across socio-demographic groups suggests that confidence in medicine is related to trust in doctors’ ethics but different from obedience to doctors’ authority. Therefore, the downward trend in confidence in medicine may suggest a decline in public trust in doctors’ ethics, but not necessarily a decline in obedience to doctors’ authority.