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Weight Management
Why address weight management in your practice?
Obesity is a leading contributor to morbidity and mortality in the US. You know this; you see it in your patients. It is often that “common denominator” issue for back pain, sleep problems, type 2 diabetes, and many other issues. Too much weight is a problem for our patients, both physically and mentally. Our research has found that primary care providers and staff across the country feel that helping patients achieve a healthy or healthier weight is part of what we should be doing in primary care.
Considering offering weight and obesity management services
We often feel powerless to do something to help patients lose weight. There are a lot of barriers. However, we have also learned that there are a lot of solutions. In this website, we encourage you to focus on the solutions and how to make them a reality for the patients in your practice.
What is success in weight management in practice?
Great question. What is success? We posit that there can be many definitions, and probably the best is what you think is most important. At a minimum, it is what primary care is about — helping our patients to be a little bit healthier. What can we do to put systems and approaches in place in the way we deliver care that can increase the chances that our patients live a healthier lifestyle? We are not the only responsible party here. In fact, most of what we learned through our research is that we live in an obesogenic society. We cannot overcome all of that, but we can care about our patients and deliver evidence-based strategies to them, and some of them will show some improvements.
From Our Interviews with Practitioners
You get to celebrate with [your patients] … and that gives you some of your job satisfaction back that’s being sucked out of you every day with this other stuff that’s going on. Cause when you’re seeing results, they’re happy, you’re happy, you’re talking about things that really are impacting their life.
Physician
I love it. I like helping people. I like making them happy. They’ve tried to lose weight on their own. They’ve tried for so long, and it feels like nothing helps. I really do like being able to help people.
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
Like, Miss C, that came today. She’s happy. She was waiting out there for me to give her her report card, her lab. She never had such a good lab. She says, ‘I’m gonna frame it.’
Nurse Practitioner