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How Obesity Can Impact Otolaryngology Patient Care

by Cheryl Alkon •

Obesity Resources

  • To learn whether you have implicit bias about overweight or obese people, take the online tests at Project Implicit: implicit.harvard.edu/implicit.
  • The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity offers continuing medical education about how physicians can improve their care for overweight and obese patients; resources include a video, online toolkit, handouts, and other materials: yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=196.
  • Doc Com, offered jointly from the Drexel University College of Medicine and the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare, provides online modules to help physicians improve their overall communication skills with patients, colleagues, and others: doccom.aachonline.org/dnn/Home.aspx.
  • To calculate a patient’s body mass index, see the CDC’s resources for adults, teens and children: cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi.

Prevalent Attitudes Among All Physicians

Weight biases aren’t unique to the field of otolaryngology, or even to the field of medicine, said Janice A. Sabin, PhD, MSW, a research assistant professor in the biomedical informatics and medical education department at the University of Washington in Seattle. “This is common and prevalent in society. Doctors aren’t different from others.” | ← Previous | | | Next → | Single Page