THE INFLUENCE OF MIXED VIRTUAL HEALTH COMMUNITIES ON PATIENTS’ TRUST IN THEIR REGULAR PHYSICIAN IN A HEALTH CRISIS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF A MIXED COVID-19 VIRTUAL HEALTH COMMUNITY

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 health crisis in March 2020, the greater part of the world’s population has experienced heightened sanitary measures, and many questions have arisen surrounding this still poorly understood disease. In search of answers, many people turn to social media, and in particular to virtual mixed health communities. This article, conducted in an exploratory spirit, explores and analyzes the influence that a community of this type, mixing patients and doctors, can have on the trust of patients towards their usual doctor. To address our problem, we identified a virtual health COVID-19 community and implemented a netnographic approach based on the collation and interpretation of linguistic and non-­linguistic data. The results reveal that patients’ trust in their physicians is now partially influenced by information exchanged in the virtual community, and we highlight that there appears to be a conceptual evolution of the nature of trust in the patient–physician relationship: what we call “reverent trust” seems to be disappearing, while a new form of trust, which we describe as “viral intermediated,” seems to be appearing. This evolution, resulting from the health crisis and the rise of the peer-to-peer model characteristic of virtual communities, could be taken into account as a means to renew the medical relationship. The managerial challenge is for doctors to maintain trust with patients, for example by reconceiving the medical relationship as a triadic relationship including virtual communities as actors in the relationship.