Researchers: Nissim Cohen¹, Eran Vigoda-Gadot¹, Shlomo Mizrahi¹

Background: Battling the COVID-19 global pandemic has been a major challenge for nations, communities, and individuals since the outbreak of the crisis in early 2020. To provide citizens with quality services in such challenging times, public healthcare teams worldwide have been at the forefront of this battle and their contribution to the successful management of the crisis is invaluable.

Objectives: This study examined the factors affecting citizens’ and healthcare employees’ behaviors and attitudes towards the administrative, managerial, and political system in Israel. We were specifically interested in trust and resilience (organizational, community, national) as major variables.

Method: We conducted two studies, one among Israeli citizens and the other among healthcare employees from the Ministry of Health, public hospitals, and HMOs in Israel. We compared our findings to previous data available on the trust in and performance of the Israeli public sector published by the Center for Public Management and Policy (2001-2021).

Findings: First, the Israeli public generally had a great deal of trust in healthcare organizations during the pandemic, reflecting its trust in these groups in normal times as well. Second, the trust of both citizens and healthcare employees was quite strongly related to other managerial variables such as satisfaction with services, participation in decision-making, and the overall performance of these systems.

Conclusions: Our findings emphasize the major role of trust in and around the healthcare system both in normal and turbulent times.

Recommendations: On a practical level, we emphasize the responsibility of governments to continuously provide healthcare systems with the resources needed to deal with crises. We also recommend that policies for maintaining the trust and resilience of healthcare workers and the public be developed and implemented in the future.

Research end date: 11/2021