Cmaj Podcasts

Send us a textThis two-part episode of the CMAJ Podcast explores the roots and repercussions of medical mistrust. It begins with a historical lens, revealing echoes of today’s strained relationships between patients and the medical system, then narrows the scope to focus on a pressing clinical example.In part one, Dr. Kenneth Pinnow, a historian of Soviet medicine at Allegheny College and author of the article in CMAJ entitled Soviet medicine and the problem of public trust: 1921–1929, walks through the fraught relationship between physicians and the public in the early Soviet era. He explains how underfunding, class tensions, and unrealistic expectations resulted in widespread hostility toward physicians and fractured trust that proved difficult to repair.Part two narrows in on vaccine hesitancy, a timely example of medical distrust made more urgent by recent measles outbreaks. Dr. Noni MacDonald, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Dalhousie University and former member of the WHO’s Strategic Advis