New study highlights obesity bias among trainee doctors

The ability of future doctors to treat obese patients could be undermined by unconscious biases they hold against overweight people, according to a new US study.

Scientists at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have carried out a three-year study including more than 300 third-year medical students at a US medical school, using a computer programme called the Weight Implicit Association Test to measure unconscious preferences.

It was found that 39 percent of medical students had a moderate to strong unconscious anti-fat bias, with these trainees being more likely to assume that obese individuals will not follow treatment plans and less willing to respect the patients.

Given that such biases can affect the patient/doctor relationship and undermine care quality, it is important that they are brought out into the open.

Dr David Miller, associate professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, said: "Because anti-fat stigma is so prevalent and a significant barrier to the treatment of obesity, teaching medical students to recognise and mitigate this bias is crucial."

Obesity is a growing problem in the UK, with recent NHS data showing that just over a quarter of all adults in England are now obese.