Doubly Dangerous: Medical Students’ Observations of Weight Bias in the Clinical Setting
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65539/z2d2r747Keywords:
weight bias, obesity stigma, medical ethics, medical education, BMIAbstract
Weight bias is pervasive in clinical encounters yet remains underaddressed in medical education. Drawing on vignettes from their clerkship year, the authors illustrate how stigmatizing assumptions about patients with higher body mass index (BMI) can violate core ethical principles of justice, autonomy, and non-maleficence. They describe how biased narratives about an IVF patient, a transgender man on gender-affirming hormone therapy, and a child labeled “obese” both harm patients and normalize discriminatory practices among trainees. The essay argues for a weight-neutral, evidence-based approach that centers patient values, promotes respectful communication, and explicitly teaches students to recognize and resist weight stigma in clinical training and practice.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Meghana Vagawala, Alison Mosier-Mills, Bethany Brumbaugh (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
