Markey Charlotte H, August Kristin J, Rosenbaum Diane L, Gillen Meghan M, Malik Dua, Pillarisetty Simran
Rutgers University, 415 Armitage, 311 N 5th Street, Camden, NJ, 08102, USA.
The Pennsylvania State University, Abington, USA.
J Eat Disord. 2024 Oct 11;12(1):159. doi: 10.1186/s40337-024-01119-4.
Although many people have concerns about their body image, weight, and eating behaviors these issues are not usually discussed in a productive manner with medical providers. Thus, we examined nursing and medical students' willingness to discuss patients' weight, body image, and eating disorders and reasons why they may do so.
One hundred and eighty-three nursing and medical students (M = 25.06, SD = 5.43) participated in this study. Participants completed open-ended questions pertaining to their willingness to discuss body image, eating, and weight-related issues with future patients. We further queried students' perspective on body mass index (BMI) as a measure of weight status and sought to determine if participants' own weight, weight concerns, appearance evaluation, body appreciation, and experiences of stigma were associated with their willingness to discuss weight-related issues with prospective patients.
Coding of qualitative data indicated that nursing and medical students were "sometimes" willing to discuss prospective patients' weight, body image, and eating disorders, especially if a health concern was evident. Nursing students seemed somewhat more willing to discuss weight issues than medical students and willingness to discuss one of these issues (e.g., body image) was positively associated with willingness discuss the others. Plans for future discussions of body image and weight were marginally associated with personal experiences of weight stigma. The majority of participants indicated that BMI was not a valid measure of health.
Taken together, findings suggest that future providers' conversations with patients about these sensitive topics are less likely to be associated with their own experiences and more with the relevance of these topics to specific patients.
尽管许多人对自己的身体形象、体重和饮食行为感到担忧，但这些问题通常不会以有效的方式与医疗服务提供者进行讨论。因此，我们研究了护理专业和医学专业学生讨论患者体重、身体形象和饮食失调问题的意愿以及他们这样做的原因。
183名护理专业和医学专业学生（平均年龄M = 25.06，标准差SD = 5.43）参与了本研究。参与者完成了与他们与未来患者讨论身体形象、饮食和体重相关问题的意愿有关的开放式问题。我们进一步询问了学生对体重指数（BMI）作为体重状况衡量指标的看法，并试图确定参与者自己的体重、对体重的担忧、外表评价、身体欣赏以及耻辱经历是否与他们与潜在患者讨论体重相关问题的意愿有关。
定性数据编码表明，护理专业和医学专业学生“有时”愿意讨论潜在患者的体重、身体形象和饮食失调问题，特别是如果明显存在健康问题。护理专业学生似乎比医学专业学生更愿意讨论体重问题，并且讨论其中一个问题（例如身体形象）的意愿与讨论其他问题的意愿呈正相关。未来讨论身体形象和体重的计划与体重耻辱的个人经历略有相关。大多数参与者表示BMI不是健康的有效衡量指标。
综合来看，研究结果表明，未来医疗服务提供者与患者就这些敏感话题进行的对话不太可能与他们自己的经历相关，而更多地与这些话题与特定患者的相关性有关。
