Prejudice against obesity in university students studying in health‐related departments

Abstract

According to the results of the study, university students who will be future nurses and other healthcare professionals, tend toward obesity prejudice, negatively impacting health care.

Birinci Basamakta Çalışan Ebe ve Hemşirelerin Obezite Önyargısı

“…No statistically significant difference was found between health personnel's' obesity prejudice scale average score and age, gender, marital status, income, level of education, profession, BMI and years in profession ( Table 1, Tablo 2). Similarly, no association was found between age and obesity prejudice scale average scores in studies conducted (10,12). Contrary to our study, in a study conducted on primary healthcare professionals, those with more years of employment in the profession were found to be more biased towards obese people (18).…”

“…That is, the health personnel who did not consider themselves as prejudiced against obese individuals were in fact more prejudiced than others. Similarly, in another study, it was found that the individuals who stated that they were unprejudiced against obese individuals were found to have higher obesity prejudice average scores than the individuals who stated that they were prejudiced (12). The reason why individuals had higher average scores although they stated that they were unprejudiced brings to mind that health personnel can have implicit (latent) prejudice that they are not aware of.…”

“…The scale has 27 items and it was developed in parallel with 5 Likert type. Negative items (1,3,5,6,8,9,12,13,16,18,19,21,23,24,26) are scored from 1 to 5 starting from "totally agree", while positive items (2, 4,7,10,11,14,15,17,20,22,25,27) are scored from 5 to 1 starting from "totally agree". The lowest score one can get from the scale is 27, while the highest score is 135.…”

“…Negative attitude of health personnel causes obese individuals to withdraw themselves from treatment, to have decreased confidence against health personnel and to cancel or postpone appointments more frequently (8)(9). Studies have found that students in the field of health and university students (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) and health professionals are prejudiced or inclined to be prejudiced against obese individuals (16) and this situation causes individuals to withdraw themselves from treatment and to get insufficient treatment (17).…”

A call for grounding implicit bias training in clinical and translational frameworks

“…For example, in countries with relatively little racial variability, other forms of implicit bias such as weight (eg, eastern Asian countries), immigrants (eg, western European countries), or religion (eg, Middle Eastern countries) might play an important role in patient care. [13][14][15] In this Viewpoint, we highlight three crucial translational gaps in implicit bias training that are used in medical schools and other health organisations. We suggest that before medical schools and other health organisations invest further time and financial resources in implicit bias training, they should pause, take a step back, and critically evaluate the grounding and effectiveness of current training.…”