Trust is considered as an important process in establishing positive patient-professional relationships and healthcare outcomes. While many studies denote the mutualreciprocal nature of trust, there is a strong tendency to consider professionals merely as trustees. This article presents a review of literature addressing healthcare professionals' trust in patients, aiming to identify and compare more theoretical and more empirical contributions on the topic as a basis for developing a research agenda. We examine 31 theoretical and empirical peer-reviewed articles that address healthcare professionals' trust in patients, either as the primary or secondary focus. We found that healthcare professionals' trust in patients is still overlooked in empirical trust studies into healthcare, despite several theoretical and review articles emphasising the relevance of the topic. We propose that future empirical research considers professionals' uncertainties and vulnerabilities, and that theoretical studies reflect more on methodological approaches for researching their conceptualisations. Moreover, our findings suggest that while system-based understandings have been seen as important for considering how patients trust in their healthcare, we argue that This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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