What is The Trust Initiative?

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During the pandemic, public trust and trust within healthcare fluctuated. Many health workers reported mental wellbeing challenges and moral distress during this worldwide health crisis.

As the health sector rebounds from the pandemic, finding ways to strengthen trust is one more way to support the skilled, professional, and empathetic people who work in healthcare.

Trusting relationships and trustworthy organizational cultures contribute to employee wellbeing, satisfaction, and retention. High levels of trust are associated with ethical and just workplaces as well as high-functioning organizations with enhanced patient experiences. Emerging trust research in a post pandemic climate correlate high HCW trust with higher levels of patient trust, suggesting promising contributions to healthier workplaces and in turn improved patient outcomes. Worker wellbeing enhances a culture of health and safety, reduces injury and time loss claims, encourages retention, makes recruitment easier, and improves patient outcomes. 

Trust: For this survey the definition of trust is a "willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the action of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control the other party" (Mayer, Davis and Schooreman, 1995).

Healthcare worker: All healthcare workers in any healthcare position including “…health professionals, health associate professionals, personal care workers in health services, health management and support personnel, and other health service providers not elsewhere classified” (World Health Organization, 2019).

Wellbeing or mental wellbeing: A state of healthiness where people can cope with the stresses of life, work well, feel psychologically safe, and can contribute productively to their communities. 

Dr. Nickolas Cherwinski is a social and behavioural scientist, his expertise spans research ethics and methodologies, public policy, public governance, implementation and evaluation sciences, mental health and addiction, traumatology, and conflict facilitation. Nickolas holds a PhD in Law and Public Policy, with a research focus on healthcare, structural marginalization, and mental health policy. He also holds a Master of Philosophy in Public Administration, and a Master of Arts in Conflict Analysis and Management, specializing in Political, Ethnic, and Security Issues, and is a certified addiction counsellor.

Dr. Lorelei Newton PhD RN CGNC is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria. She has practised as a clinical nurse, advanced practice nurse, professional practice leader, educator and manager in a variety of rural and urban settings including palliative care, oncology, emergency, and community/public health. Lorelei's research interests include nursing ethics, geriatric oncology nursing, the intersection of ageing and oncology with a recent focus on the nursing workforce required for safe and sustainable practice environments. Lorelei is currently the President of the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology/Association canadienne des infirmières en oncologie (CANO/ACIO) as well as an International Council of Nurses Global Nurse Leadership Institute alumni. She is a certified ICN  Global Nurse Consultant as well as a recent recipient of the NNPBC’s Excellence in Nursing Leadership Award. 

Dr. Lenora Marcellus is a professor and Director of the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria. She practiced as a Registered Nurse for 25 years in a range of perinatal and neonatal settings and roles before joining the School of Nursing in 2009. Her current research interests include perinatal substance use, neonatal opioid withdrawal, supporting infants in foster care, and supporting young families. She completed a Canadian Institutes for Health Research trainee fellowship in gender and addiction at the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health with a focus on the intersections of violence, trauma and mental health.