Nurses remain the most trusted workers. They can help counter misinformation.

Nurses continue to build on a remarkable streak.

For more than two decades, nurses have been recognized as the most trustworthy profession, according to a new Gallup poll released this week. Nurses have held the top spot since being added to Gallup’s poll in 1999.

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, welcomed the news.

“This trust is more than an accolade,” she said in a news release. “It affirms the essential leadership role nurses play on the national stage of healthcare, in policy, in strengthened communities, and in advancing equitable, high-quality care.”

Three of four Americans (75%) surveyed rated nurses as honest and ethical. Doctors ranked among the top professions, with 57% of respondents regarding them as trustworthy.

The poll comes at a time when many physicians and healthcare leaders acknowledge that they don’t enjoy the same level of trust from patients as they once did. Doctors also say they are seeing more misinformation and skepticism of vaccines, and they add that the federal government’s changing guidance on vaccines is adding to the confusion.

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Since nurses have earned the trust of the public, they can help patients and address their concerns about vaccines and other public health issues.

In a December interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®, Mensik Kennedy talked about the important role nurses can play in a time of rising misinformation and confusion, especially as Americans get more information from social media and have less trust in the medical establishment.

Nurses are willing to have open and safe conversations with patients, and they will talk to them without judgment, she says.

“Then you could have a really healthy conversation with them,” Mensik Kennedy said. “It doesn't do anyone good, I think, to tell someone they're wrong, because that's going to stop that communication, right? So keeping open communication and helping move people through all of the information that is out there on the internet, I think, is vitally important.”

(See part of our conversation in this video. The story continues below.)

Doctors are also engaging patients in conversations to address their concerns or questions about vaccines, and that level of engagement is critical.

But nurses can also help in those efforts because they are especially skilled in speaking to patients in plain language that they can understand, Mensik Kennedy says.

“We're the translators in the healthcare system,” she says. “A physician might come in to a patient for a couple of minutes and say something, and we're with them. And then the provider might leave, and then we translate what that meant. Because, again, we know that person in their situation and who they are, and so we can help provide the context and the meaning for that piece of information for that individual.”

“That's why I think nurses are so uniquely positioned, because we've always been the translators. And we're continuing to be the translators. It's one thing to cite a research study, but how we put it into context for people, I think makes a big difference,” she says.

Under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has made substantial changes to federal vaccine policy, including dropping recommendations for a host of vaccines.

Medical societies have denounced the changes, saying they run counter to scientific evidence attesting to the safety and efficiency of vaccines. Critics also fault Kennedy for ousting members of a key vaccine advisory panel and replacing them with vaccine skeptics.

Mensik Kennedy said she’d welcome the opportunity to add nurses to the vaccine advisory panel.

“We know that nursing is the most trusted profession, and we have extensive background in science and courses and knowledge in these areas,” she says. “And so having individuals that are the most trusted, having them on those panels, is absolutely important.”