Poll: Trust in medical doctors has fallen 14 points since 2021

Public trust in doctors declines: ©Grispb - stock.adobe.com

A Gallup Poll found that trust in medical doctors, while still high, has dropped the most of any profession since 2021. Meanwhile, three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement. Grade-school teachers rank second, with 61% viewing them highly, while military officers, and pharmacists also earn high trust from majorities of Americans.

The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.

Of the remaining occupations measured in the Dec. 2-18, 2024, poll, six (including police officers, clergy and judges) are viewed more positively than negatively by Americans, although with positive ratings not reaching the majority level. The other nine, notably including bankers, lawyers and business executives, are seen more negatively than positively, with no more than 50% rating their ethics low.

Today’s rank-order aligns with the public’s evaluations of U.S. occupations for the past two decades. Over this period, medical practitioners, grade-school teachers and military officers have been the most trusted professions, while political, sales, business and media-related jobs have constituted the least.

Nurses have earned the highest rating in every year but one since Gallup added them to the annual survey in 1999. The exception was 2001, when firefighters -- included only that year -- earned a record 90% trust rating after their heroism in responding to the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

Since 1999 when tracking of professions began, the average very high/high ethics rating of the core 11 professions has decreased from routinely 40% or higher in the early 2000s to closer to 35% during most of the 2010s. It rose slightly in 2020, to a seven-year high of 38%, reflecting enhanced public trust in health care workers and teachers during the pandemic. Thereafter, the average declined each year through 2023, when it reached 30%, and it held there in 2024. This mirrors the long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions.

The relatively low average honesty and ethics ratings in 2023 and 2024 reflect diminished scores for a few professions, in particular, since 2021. That’s the latest year that most of the professions on this year’s list -- all but funeral home directors -- were rated at the same time.

• Trust in medical doctors has fallen 14 percentage points since 2021. After reaching a historical high of 77% in 2020, doctors’ ethics rating not only returned to its 2019/pre-pandemic level of 65% but, at 53%, is now the lowest since the mid-1990s.
• Day care providers, pharmacists, nurses and nursing home operators -- all of which had enjoyed enhanced reviews during year one or year two of the pandemic -- have since dropped below their average pre-pandemic ratings.
• Judges have seen a 10-point decline to 28% in their honesty and ethics rating, by far the lowest for this profession which, before 2021, had scored between 43% and 53%.
• Views of the police have been variable, but after earning majority trust in 2020 and 2021, their rating slipped to 45% in 2023 and 44% today.
• Clergy have lost another six points in public esteem since 2021, continuing the long-term downward trend in trust in that profession.

Ratings of the other 15 professions measured in both years haven’t changed appreciably.

The second-most-significant decline in ethics ratings this century has been for judges, who have experienced a 21-point drop since the early 2000s. Some of this change occurred early on, falling from an average 49% in 2000-2009 to 46% in 2007 and to 43% in 2020. But since then, high ratings for judges have tumbled to 28%, paralleling recent downturns in Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court as well as the judicial system and courts more broadly. The high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade as well as various legal cases against Donald Trump since 2020 could explain declines in these ratings by both major parties, according to Gallup..

Despite declining public trust in most professions over the past quarter century, the rank order has stayed largely the same, with nurses at the top, followed by grade-school teachers, military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors. Meanwhile, in terms of net trust, members of Congress, advertising practitioners, car salespeople and lobbyists have ranked at the bottom.