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"Unhelpful weight comments"

About: Meltham Group Practice

My daughter came to a health review to re-join the surgery and was told she is in the obese category. She keeps fit and she eats very healthily with awareness of what is healthy and unhealthy food. She also suffers with self esteem issues and anxiety. She is intelligent and understands that her build is curvaceous and always has been despite her diet. The nurse was clumsy and did not check how she might feel about what she was being told. She then became very anxious and had a panic attack in response to the check-up. Staff need to be more careful in how they approach such delicate issues in a world where especially girls and women feel under pressure to look a certain way. The NHS needs to think more carefully about the language used around especially young people when discussing weight and BMIs. The word “obese” is a negative term associated with being extremely overweight which my daughter is definitely not. Please can we change this language and have a more hollistic and less tick-box approach.

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Response from Meltham Group Practice 4 months ago
Meltham Group Practice
Submitted on 26/02/2025 at 12:47
Published on nhs.uk at 12:47


We are sorry to hear that your daughter was distressed following her review. As a health service we have a duty to discuss health promotion with our patients.

We appreciate some of these conversations can be difficult and as such we will only ever use factually correct terminology.

Whilst we try to address individual needs, our approach needs to be consistent for all patients.

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