Misinformation, burnout and lost trust are 'incredibly interrelated'

Nearly seven in 10 physicians (69%) say they encountered patients influenced by misinformation or disinformation a moderate amount to a great deal over the past year.

That's up from 61% in 2025, according to “How Practice Conditions Shape Physician Wellbeing,” The Physicians Foundation’s 2026 Survey of America's Physicians.

Misinformation, physician burnout and eroding trust: “They're incredibly interrelated,” said Physicians Foundation President Gary Price, M.D., MBA.

“They all go back to the importance of the patient-physician interaction, which is really just a human connection that's part of delivering good-quality care and getting good outcomes,” he said.

Price, a board-certified plastic surgeon who has served as an attending surgeon and clinical assistant professor of surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital, coauthored a viewpoint published online Sept. 8 in JAMA Internal Medicine, “Rebuilding trust in the patient-physician relationship.” He spoke with Medical Economics about why misinformation is getting worse, what it looks like differently in primary care and specialty practice, and why physicians often take the blame for forces beyond their control.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

According to the survey results, nearly seven in 10 physicians, or 69%, said they encountered patients influenced by misinformation a moderate amount to a great deal over the past year. That rose from 2025. What is driving the increase, and why does social media stand out as a leading source?

Gary Price, M.D., MBA: Our physicians are reporting to us that social media is the biggest factor driving misinformation among the patients they see, and they're seeing it in their exam rooms every day.

It's not surprising to practicing physicians, having been one myself until I retired just after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What's disappointing is that instead of easing as the crisis passed, the situation has gotten worse. Physicians are reporting, at a disturbingly frequent rate, that misinformation is changing patients' behavior and having an adverse effect on their health.

The survey talks about patient anxiety, nonadherence to care and refusal of recommended care. That turns up in every specialty, but especially in primary care. What does that look like in a typical primary care visit, and then maybe for specialists?

Gary Price, M.D., MBA: It's a little different, because the primary care physician has more of an opportunity to deal with a patient in a long-term relationship, with everyday health issues that take place over time. Much of the misinformation streaming at our patients revolves around those everyday health maintenance issues, be it a decision to get vaccinated, or whether a supplement is really beneficial, or should substitute for a recommended prescription.

With specialists, such as myself, our interactions with patients may be shorter term, and the challenges are more focused around a given diagnosis or procedure. That's why primary care physicians perceive this as a higher burden, though the differences roughly run around 10% between primary care and specialists, so there's still a tremendous burden even for specialists.

When a patient comes into a physician's office with something they found online, whether it's a tested solution or simply an anecdotal one, a claim that might or might not be true, what are some good ways for doctors to respond?

Gary Price, M.D., MBA: Starting from a position of trust is critical. Patients come in mistrusting the physician for a variety of reasons, from what they hear in family discussions to their own mental health, or how staff treated them before they arrived.

The physician has a unique opportunity, at a key inflection point in health care, to listen to the patient's concerns with respect and listen actively. There are skills that can be learned to help build trust; conveying warmth and expertise goes a long way toward starting a discussion from a trusted playing field.

Our health care environment right now is, in a way, driving many things against doing that: the fragmentation of our delivery system as it's become more consolidated, and the way insurance companies treat patients' access to care, especially with preauthorizations and denials. These big consolidated institutions don't necessarily focus on making sure the patient has time with a physician to have the discussions that build trust.

This isn't just an issue of feeling warm and fuzzy. The ability of patients to trust their physician, to listen to what they say and follow their advice, is key to the outcomes of their health care. We're talking about something that's critical to the safety and the quality of the care we provide.

Do physicians and other clinicians sometimes bear the brunt of blame for factors that are not always in their control, especially when patients are frustrated with the systems themselves and the only people they know how to respond to are their doctor, their nurse or someone in the office?

Gary Price, M.D., MBA: I wouldn't look at it as a blame issue, but we're direct witnesses to things interfering with a patient's health over time. As physicians, we're held accountable for that, and this goes back to the well-being issue. When you're held accountable for something you're losing control over, that's part of the beginning and end of burnout.

At the core of that is the realization that the human connection, the patient-physician relationship, and the ability to establish trust are so important to helping our patients maintain their health. Our health care planners and leaders are going to have to consciously design the environments in which we deliver health care, with a conscious intent to make sure the ability to have time to establish that kind of rapport and trust with patients is restored.

In fairness, not only the patients, but our entire health care system, our society and our politicians tend to hold us responsible for these outcomes, which have increasingly gotten beyond our control.