Patients' resistance to being weighed at medical appointments has clinicians split, with some welcoming the opportunity to engage with patients and others insisting weight is a necessary data point that needs to be consistently recorded, The Washington Post reports.
More-Love.org, an eating disorder advocacy group, sells business cards that read: "Please Don't Weigh Me Unless It's (Really) Medically Necessary" and "If you really need my weight, please tell me why so I can give you my informed consent." The group's founder, who recovered from an eating disorder, began selling the cards in 2019. She says they are meant to support people "in requesting healthcare that is free of weight bias."
"These cards are a very polite way to open a conversation with healthcare providers about whether they really need our weight," the website notes. "And if they do, then we can make an informed choice about that. The difference is that now being weighed before an appointment can be a conversation rather than an assumption."
One physician told The Post the cards may be limited in their effectiveness. Umbereen Nehal, MD, a pediatrician and former CMO for Community Healthcare Network in New York, strongly believes patients need to be weighed every visit and would like to see data on whether the absence of weight leads to better outcomes before letting patients opt out of the scale.
"Is the hypothesis that somebody who is obese, let's say, if we don't weigh them, fatphobia will go away? Those visual cues will not go away," Dr. Nehal said. "So my beef with this is that it disrupts processes in the system for efficient data collection and that data are used for a variety of things."
On the other hand, one primary care group in Omaha, Neb., actually has the cards on hand for patients. Clinicians at Element Primary Care ask patients if they would like to be weighed.
"It's not like we're never going to obtain their weight and get that measurement, it's just on the patient's terms," Ann Wieseler, a nurse practitioner with Element Primary Care, told The Post. "The cards help patients feel safe and empowered with their health and help them be an advocate for themselves."
Read The Post's story in full here.