Nursing PhD Student’s Podcast Explores Trust Across Industries

When PhD student Jill Sergison, CNM, MA came to Duke, with a background in midwifery and reproductive health policy, she was interested in cervical cancer disparities in Appalachia. Exploring the psychosocial aspects of the disease’s higher rates among Appalachian women, Sergison noticed another disparity: “I found a million articles about why Appalachian women didn’t trust providers,” she said, “but I didn’t see any articles about how Appalachian providers were engendering trust in their patients.” 

This imbalance sparked Sergison’s interest in the topic of trust. “When we have a patient and a provider, we always assume the more vulnerable one carries the burden of having trust, as opposed to the more powerful one,” Sergison explained. “And I feel this reversal in all kinds of areas of my life, so I thought it would be interesting to talk to people in other disciplines where there’s skepticism, like media, politics, and research.” 

Sergison created a podcast, TrustFund, where she speaks with expert guests on the topic of trust in research (Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, PhD, MPH, RN); therapy (Jonathan Bell, LCSW, LCAS); politics (Julie von Haefen, JD); healthcare (Neal Prose, MD); media (Lisa Sorg); and policy (Jay Pearson, PhD, MPH).  

With half of the podcast’s guests affiliated with Duke—Gonzalez-Guarda is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing, Prose is a Professor of Pediatrics and Dermatology and an affiliate at the Duke Global Health Institute, and Pearson is an Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy—Sergison said her conversations illuminated encouraging aspects of the Duke community’s approach to trust. 

“[Dr. Gonzalez-Guarda] talks about trust and research, especially in marginalized populations, and it’s a conversation about how research isn’t sterile—it can be about loving the population that you study and building community with them, and how that can enrich a lot of types of research,” Sergison remarked. “I’d never heard that perspective before I came to Duke.” 

The interviews also allow Duke students to hear their professors “discuss something they’ve never heard them discuss before,” Sergison noted. “It’s a beautiful way to hear more intimate conversations about very salient topics.” 

Considering her conversations as a whole, Sergison identified some common themes and takeaways. “Trust involves listening well and having people feel seen,” she explained. “That was the common thread. The way you do that in medicine or research or climate journalism is very different, but that’s the heart of what builds good trusting relationships. It comes very easily to some people, and other people have to hone it.” 

Many of her guests, Sergison said, addressed the need to foster a systems-level approach to trust. “No one knows who sits on the budgetary committee, and that’s a big problem—if it’s shrouded in mystery,” Sergison said. “Because then how can we as constituents have trust in that process? [My guests] naturally widened the aperture to discuss responsibility not only to the person right in front of us, but to our field.” 

When it comes to future applications of her work, Sergison said she envisions integrating the concept of trust more intentionally into education, healthcare, and policy. “There are very few people who build programming around this,” Sergison said. “We always talk about how nurses are the most trusted professionals, but we don’t have a really clear sense of what their qualities are that make that true.” 

For now, Sergison hopes her listeners will be prompted to think more deeply about trust in their own jobs and interactions. 

“My conversations provided beautiful insights into what we as professionals owe the people that we serve in terms of being trustworthy,” she said. “I’m hoping people listen to these and are able to extrapolate the ways in which they can foster trust in their own careers, and also what they should expect from people who care for them.”