October 5, 2011

Doctors’ language under examination

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Doctors should be wary of how they talk to patients about their weight, say Yale researchers. The study, from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, found that parents prefer that health professionals describe a patient’s weight as “unhealthy” instead of using the terms “fat,” “obese” or “extremely obese.”… “Especially in primary care, it is important to build good relationships with families,” Katie Linnemann, a primary care pediatrician in the Mayo Clinic health system in Iowa, said. “And it helps to know what turns off or offends parents and what helps keep the door open.”

Yale Daily News, Ariel Flotte, 10/5/11

Tags: General Internal Medicine

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