Do obese doctors seem less trustworthy in their patients’ eyes? Personal and professional lives of any profession should always be kept separate and so a doctor’s professional judgement and skills definitely should not be tied to his own personal life outside of work. However, being in the service industry, a good patient-doctor relationship is still extremely important, and this includes how a patient views their doctor, and the trust between the two parties. Viewed as lacking in professionalism The private life of doctors will always be a point of concern for patients, akin to seeing a doctor smoking, so sadly patients may often feel that obese doctors lack a sense of professionalism, creating a lack of confidence in that doctor. This may not be entirely fair, but patients tend to hold doctors to higher standards, expecting them to live as how they advocate patients to, and this would include having high standards with regard to a doctor’s health and appearance, This is especially so with regard to obesity. There already is a social stigma against people who are overweight, and just as how obese individuals are stigmatized in many other professional and personal settings, overweight doctors are often seen as less credible than their counterparts of “normal weight”. More likely to change doctors A study conducted by Yale University had participants complete surveys about a hypothetical doctor, including questions on whether they would choose the doctor as a provider, follow the doctor’s advice about exercise and losing weight, or consider the doctor credible and trustworthy based on physical descriptions of the doctor. And while the descriptors were kept mostly the same, the only difference among the versions of the hypothetical doctor was whether they were of “normal weight”, “overweight”, or “obese”. Those who answered the surveys about doctors described as overweight or obese were significantly more likely to change providers than those with doctors described as being of normal weight, regardless of the weight of the patient. Patients questioned recommended treatments In an interview with the New York Times, Dr George Fielding recounted how in the late 1990’s he was over 150kg and was having trouble when treating patients due to his size. Despite being a well-known doctor specialising in weight loss treatment, his patients would often question the treatments he recommended to them due to his weight. Although he was an internationally recognised expert on lap band and gastric bypass surgeries, the fact that he was overweight made his patients skeptical about being treated by him, even to the point of being dissuaded from using his services and hopping to another specialist instead. Subjected to patient scrutiny It is by no means an easy job to give health advice to patients as it is. As an overweight doctor, having to tell a patient that they need to lose weight may be rebuffed by a cry of hypocrisy. But it has to be understood that just being a doctor does not automatically make patients listen to every piece of advice you give. As a doctor, you are constantly subjected to patient scrutiny and judgement, but it also has to be noted that as a doctor, you are in a position to change society’s stigma against obesity. Shared struggles with overweight patients Overweight doctors may even be able to connect better with overweight patients in sharing their shared struggles to shed the extra pounds. But more than just that, doctors can come out and explain how being overweight may not always tell the whole story. People can definitely be overweight in appearance or BMI, but are living very healthy lifestyles, or conversely, how thin people can also be unhealthy due to lifestyle habits. The conversation regarding health can then turn from being myopic and only considering weight, to open up and look at healthy behaviours instead of just weight loss. Source
