La fiducia nelle pratiche di cura. Spunti analitici fra teoria e ricerca

Trust and health share a peculiar invisibility: both become salient only when they turn into their opposites, illness and distrust. This article examines trust in health care practices, drawing on two ethnographies conducted in acute psychiatric wards and paediatric vaccination clinics in Italy. Building on Möllering’s account of trust as a suspension of uncertainty and vulnerability, it resists the notion of faith commonly ascribed to that suspension, proposing instead to read it as a recourse to assumptions temporarily taken for granted. Three notions organise the argument: the bilaterality of trust, which exposes professionals and patients alike; its responsiveness, whereby extending a credit of trust solicits–not always successfully–reciprocity; and the volatility of this disposition. The four vignettes discussed suggest that responsiveness is sensitive to the distribution of discretionary power, and that a single brief encounter may build or squander trust.