More than 2,680 people competed the primary care ‘trust’ survey issued by the NHS Race and Health Observatory in 2022, which sought views on a broad range of areas including overall trust in, and satisfaction with, primary care providers, and levels of satisfaction with remote healthcare services.
Participant responses from ethnic minority groups were compared with White British participants across key health services delivered by primary care, including GP Practices, Community Nurses, Community Pharmacies, and Midwives.
Survey data were analysed by researchers from Oxford University and published, alongside existing research on patient experience, in a new comprehensive report from the Observatory: Patient Experience and Trust in NHS Primary Care. Analyses of data from the annual General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) are also presented in the report.
Despite primary care services often being the first point of contact with the NHS for patients, the report highlights a worrying lack of trust amongst certain ethnic minority groups of the service or care that they receive. A third of South Asian participants say they rarely or never trust primary care to meet their health needs.
Patient trust is impacted by past experience, and in particular the way that healthcare professionals behave towards and communicate with them. This can directly affect their level of engagement with healthcare services, and lead to health inequities. Only half of participants (55%) trust primary care to meet their health needs most or all of the time.
Read the full story on the Department of Psychiatry website.