Time magazine explores why Americans trust nurses the most

A Time magazine article attributes nurses’ proximity to patients as the reason the public has ranked nurses in a Gallup poll as the most trusted profession for 25 years. While doctors treat disease, nurses spend time with patients experiencing disease. They are often the first to detect a change in a patient’s condition, sometimes before machines do. In addition, patients may be more comfortable with asking nurses their questions compared with physicians. Schools of nursing emphasize empathy, active listening, patient advocacy and explaining complicated medical terms in understandable language, which can endear them to patients. When patients are dying, nurses help to manage patients’ pain, sit with the family and stay in the room. (Time article, 6/22/26)