The Obese-Friendly Office

OB/GYN News,  March 15, 2000  by Sally Koch Kubetin

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To help obese patients lose weight, amend your office setting and your practice patterns to encourage their efforts, Gary Foster, Ph.D., advised at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.

"If overweight patients are not comfortable in your office, they won't come back. You can easily and unwittingly embarrass them and put them off," said Dr. Foster of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

He offered this list of recommendations for making the office friendly for the obese patient and encouraging weight loss:

Replace a few waiting room armchairs with armless models or couches. Most chairs with arms are not designed for overweight people; nothing is more discouraging or humiliating to a patient than to be forced to stand in a room full of seated people simply because she cannot fit the chairs. If the office is not welcoming to obese patients, they will be reluctant to return.

Make sure you have a scale that measures well beyond 300 pounds; many ordinary models do not. "You cannot say to someone, 'Well, you weigh somewhere over 300 pounds,'" he said.

Have a large blood pressure cuff for patients whose upper arm circumference exceeds the standard cuff. It can be very discouraging for a patient to be too big to obtain proper blood pressure measurements.

COPYRIGHT 2000 International Medical News Group
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