Table 4 Patient Trust of the Health System

Doctors not interested in patients’ lives

The doctor is just focusing on my medical needs and not focusing on my life issues or… looking at me as a human being.

What doesn’t work is when you go in a room, when you meet a patient and you treat that patient as if that patient is a patient, which it is, but different than a social worker coming into the room.

Lack of trust of primary care providers

They don’t want to open up to them, because they’re afraid that they may call the Department of Human Services on them if the kids need milk and no Pampers.

It seems like it has been passed on from maybe generations to generations the distrust of a doctor and saying, well, if I go to the doctor he is going to find – if I go for one thing, he’s going to find another thing or I can take care of myself and I don’t need to go to a doctor. It would just go away. So I find – I found that mistrust and then also thinking that you’ll be or I should say there’ll be judgment like someone is going to judge me. Somebody is not going to understand me, so I don’t want to deal with that, so they shy away.

Fear of receiving bad diagnosis

I think it’s fear. Fear causes people not to interact because you’re afraid of what you might hear. And then I found out with our family members, if you find out that cancer runs in your family all you have to do is have a spot and you’re already dying because everybody else has died.

But because of fear you don’t ask something and a lot of people and people that we know die because they didn’t ask and they were afraid to what they may hear.

Emergency department as safe haven

And the [emergency department] is a safe haven, you know, that’s a place that you can go, get a meal, sit down on a bed for however long and just be safe and not have to worry about anything, because people are worrying about you at that point.

It’s a fear of not knowing. A fear – I didn’t go to the doctor and I know this is it because most times people think them self into dying so I’m go to the emergency because I know I should have went earlier and I didn’t. So it’s like the last – that’s it.