I’m on a mission to educate healthcare professionals (as well as the individuals they treat), about the changing field of obesity care.
They also are shining a light on the disease of obesity and the availability for more treatment options.
As a result of this awareness, more people living with obesity are seeking care with healthcare professionals wanting to talk about their weight. How healthcare professionals respond is critically important.
Here are three tips to better manage the medical encounter:
1-Schedule a Weight Management Focused Visit
With all the clinical and administrative activities required during a patient visit, the patient care setting has so many competing challenges.
Discussing one’s weight journey can also be a sensitive topic. The words clinicians use matter.
This is why I recommend scheduling a weight management focused visit.
This allows time for an empathetic encounter that includes a full assessment and initiation of a treatment plan.
My newest book’s professional program and toolkit offers clinicians a roadmap of how to do so.
2-Look Beyond Weight Loss to Improved Health Outcomes
Though we are a society obsessed with body weight, a narrow focus on weight loss is not the ultimate goal.
Instead, improved weight management outcomes that include better health and quality of life is the focus.
For patients, this may mean improvement in obesity-related complications, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea or arthritis.
It may also translate into better physical functioning with less pain or shortness of breath.
For others, it translates into improved social connections and mental health.
3-Promote Self-Care Not Self-Blame
Self-imposed judgement, doubt and feelings of failure are common among individuals living with obesity.
Weight bias and stigmatization can arise from a lifetime of interactions with family members, healthcare providers, teachers, employers, colleagues, well-meaning friends and the media.
Even when patients take action to control their weight with one of the new obesity medications, they can be shamed for taking the “easy way out”.
And yet, patients being treated for other chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension or cancer are never shamed for taking approved medication treatments.
Self-blame often prevents individuals from seeking evidence-based obesity care or working openly with clinicians.
That’s why up front, clinicians need to tell patients that obesity is a disease and is not their fault.
Addressing this misbelief and setting realistic expectations head-on is an important first step in the obesity care process.
RK
Robert Kushner, MD