Patients with obesity being stigmatised by professionals

The Guardian are reporting on a systematic review by researchers at UCL in London that indicates that patients with obesity are being stigmatised.

Read: Obese patients ‘being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses’

The systematic review - Effective strategies in ending weight stigma in healthcare - looked at 25 interventional studies from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Germany, which aimed at reducing weight stigma in healthcare professionals. When individuals are stigmatised we know that this reduces motivation, discourages them from seeking help and can have significant psychological impacts. The ethical and health outcomes arguments for reducing weight bias in healthcare professionals is therefore very strong.

The researchers concluded by offering three recommendations for reducing weight bias in healthcare professionals:

First, there is a need to educate all healthcare students about the complex factors regulating body weight and address weight stigma, its prevalence, origins and impact, explicitly.

What does this mean and why is it needed? Everyone has a human right to healthcare and healthcare should be made more accessible to people who are overweight and obese, for example by ensuring any necessary medical equipment is available in a spectrum of sizes. Similarly, healthcare professionals should be aware of and able to use interventions that improve patients' health regardless of their weight or weight change.

Finally, when conducting research on the relationship between weight, health and mortality, there is a need to ensure that researchers measure and account for the confounding and/or mediating effects of weight stigma.

What does this mean and why is it needed? A confounding variable is a factor other than the one being studied that is associated both with the disease (dependent variable) and with the factor being studied (independent variable), which can therefore distort the findings of research. The researchers argue that weight bias is both linked to the causes of obesity, as well as how we think and view obesity itself:

'Preliminary research shows that a significant proportion of the relationship between obesity and health outcomes can be explained not by body weight itself, but by the negative experiences commonly shared by people with overweight and obesity.'

Therefore, it is vital that in future research on obesity, weight stigma is considered a confounding factor.

What can student's of Health & Social care take from this?

This quote from The Guardian article is valuable for H&SC students to act on: