Embodied empathy‐in‐action: overweight nurses’ experiences of their interactions with overweight patients

Abstract

Obesity is now commonly recognised to be a significant public health issue worldwide with its increasing prevalence frequently described as a global epidemic. In the United Kingdom, primary care nurses are responsible for weight management through the provision of healthy eating advice and support with lifestyle change. However, nurses themselves are not immune to the persistent and pervasive global levels of weight gain. Drawing on a Gadamerian informed phenomenological study of female primary care nurses in England, this paper considers the complex gendered understandings and experiences of being overweight, and of food and eating. The nurses' emotional and injurious experiences of being large is found to be capable of producing embodied caring practices, involving a fusion of horizons with patients over how it feels to inhabit a large body. Yet, even though subjected to similar derogatory stereotypes as patients, they simultaneously reinforce the dominant and damaging individualising psychopathology inherent to anti-obesity discourses. This suggests an urgent need to expose and challenge harmful discourses surrounding women's body size and weight in order to avoid nursing practices that unthinkingly reproduce culturally dominant and gendered understandings of weight, body size, food and eating.

Barriers and facilitators to healthy eating for nurses in the workplace: an integrative review

“…, ). Of a total of five qualitative papers, three conducted interviews with nurses (Persson & Martensson , Aranda & McGreevy , Cass et al . ); one conducted interviews and observations at facilities (Faugier et al .…”

“…). The reasons for this were not been explored in this study, but nurses have indicated struggles with food and weight are related to uncomfortable emotions faced as part of their job (Aranda & McGreevy ).…”

Should nurses be role models for healthy lifestyles? Results from a modified Delphi study

“…Stakeholders generally agreed that patients would find advice from a visibly unhealthy nurse as less credible. There is some evidence that nurses who do not lead a healthy lifestyle may be less willing to raise lifestyle issues with patients (Gonz alez et al 2009, Aranda & McGreevy 2014. A recent systematic review showed that patients may be more likely to follow the advice of a healthy healthcare professional (Kelly M., Wills J.…”

Nurses as role models in health promotion: Piloting the acceptability of a social marketing campaign

“…Nurses who engage in unhealthy behaviours may be less willing to intervene and offer health promotion advice for fear of criticism or appearing hypocritical (Aranda & McGreevy, 2014;Beletsioti-Stika & Scriven, 2006;González, Bennasar, Pericàs, Seguí, & De Pedro, 2009;Sejr & Osler, 2002;Sekijima, Seki, & Suzuki, 2005) and patients appear less likely to follow advice given by unhealthy nurses (Hicks et al, 2008;Kelly, Wills, Jester, & Speller, 2017;Kelly, Wills, & Sykes, 2017). Obesity is a visibly unhealthy behaviour and is frequently referred to in the discourse around nurses being healthy role models (e.g.…”

“…Obesity is a visibly unhealthy behaviour and is frequently referred to in the discourse around nurses being healthy role models (e.g. Aranda & McGreevy, 2014;Naish, 2012;While, 2015).…”