American Research Journal of Nursing

Introduction: Obesity is a momentous national health concern (CDC, 2020; Cawley et al., 2021). Healthcare providers are required to assist and support their patients to address obesity. However, research is needed to determine how healthcare provider weight may affect patient trust in receiving and acting on weight loss advice. The purpose of this study was to determine patient willingness to discuss weight loss with their primary care provider (PCP), and patient opinions about diet change, exercise, or weight loss advice from their providers. A related purpose was to determine if PCPs were discussing their personal health practices with their patients (known to promote patient health) and PCP response to a review of the results of the patient sample data and its expected impact on their practice. Methods: the study was a descriptive survey design and used Qualtrics to distribute a patient/community member instrument with questions related to patient trust in and receiving weight loss advice from PCPs. A related survey of PCPs in a selected health system determined PCP practices in working with overweight and obese (OW/O) patients. In addition, PCPs were asked to review the community member survey results and comment on possible impact on their practice with overweight and obese patients. Results: Using X2 analyses, the patient participants were significantly more likely to recommend to others a normal weight provider as opposed to an OW/O provider. They believed that a normal weight provider could more effectively plan a weight loss program and would better understand the difficulty in losing weight. Finally, patient participants were significantly more likely to be emabarrassed in discussing weight loss with an OW/O provider. Physician participants who reviewed patient data were more likely to increase their counseling regarding weight loss topics. Conclusions: The current study identified significant patient concerns about accepting diet, exercise, and weight loss advice from an OW/O provider compared to a normal weight provider. Physician participants who reviewed patient data were more likely to increase their counseling regarding weight loss topics. This study identifies the significant problem of OW/O providers in their role to provide weight loss advice. Patients are embarrassed to ask them about weight loss and obese providers do not often raise the topic. There are no easy answers to this dilemma. Realistically, it may be helpful in the short term to develop and investigate new approaches for providers with a weight problem to interact more effectively with their patients regarding weight loss.