Please mark your calendars for our next CBSSM seminar on Wednesday, May 1, 2013, at NCRC Building 16, 266C. Renee Anspach, PhD, will present a talk entitled, “Transplants and Trust.”

Summary: Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing interdisciplinary interest in public trust in medical institutions and patients’ trust in physicians.   At the same time, there is an imbalance in this literature:   much more has been written about patients’ trust in physicians than about physicians’ trust in patients. Drawing on data from an observational study of liver transplant selection committees in four centers in the U.S., this paper attempts to correct this imbalance.   In selection committees, discussion of the psychosocial dimensions of decision-making often turn on whether patients can be trusted, for example, to provide a truthful history, to refrain from using illicit substances; or to adhere to complex medical regimens. How professionals assess patients’ trustworthiness can have life-and-death consequences.   Understanding this process also sheds light on the ethics and social psychology of medical decision making.

Dr. Anspach is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.