Last week on Marie Anelle’s post about parenting and children’s weight, Harpy reader mischiefmanager and I got into a discussion about routine weight-monitoring at doctor’s offices. She suggested the topic really deserved a thread all of its own, so blog goddess that I am I’ve gone and created one!
Here’s a slightly edited version of our thread conversation, followed by my own more coherent argument for why routinely weighing folks as part of appointment intake proceedure can have a negative effect on peoples’ access to healthcare. I shall then open up the floor (or rather, the comment thread) for (respectful please!) debate about the role monitoring body mass plays in healthcare.
annajcook says:I just had a conversation with my mother last month about fat shaming and automatic weight checking at the doctor’s office. She was resistant to thinking it would be better best practice to forgo the automatic weigh-in for more holistic assessment of someone’s health, but after a few weeks of thinking she emailed me to say she’s starting to understand my perspective. It was a heartening conversation.
I think it’s SO HARD for us to see the way that discussion about body weight in our culture implicitly invokes shame and moral judgment because of all the powerful cultural narratives that link body size with moral fitness. We’re so used to that it’s invisible to us. So when us contrarians are like, “talking about obesity as THE public health crisis of the century is totally shaming,” folks are like, “what?! but it’s health!??!” without understanding how “health” stands in for judging someone’s moral fitness…
mischiefmanager says:@Anna: You can’t not weigh people. That piece of data, like blood pressure, can be indicative of a problem, and especially since we’re all so sensitive on the topic, a recent unexplained gain or loss is something the patient might not choose to raise. The problem isn’t the weighing, it’s the toxic attitudes our culture has about body shape and size.annajcook says:@mischiefmanager mmm. I think the weighing conversation might be a more involved one than this comment thread should be asked to sustain, but I would argue this: that there’s a difference between routine weighing as part of intake at virtually every doctor’s appointments (even specialists do it) and tracking the body mass of someone with whom you are working in a holistic manner and have decided (together) that tracking weight is part of your plan to better health. Routine taking of a person’s weight often just causes feelings of shame and has driven a number of women I know personally away from seeking medical care for any number of conditions (and I know from reading fat activist blogs this is not uncommon). So, from the perspective of a doctor who is seeking to reach patients who are not getting care it might be worth considering how de-emphasizing weight as part of the intake procedure might actually facilitate better outcomes for patients at the heavier end of the spectrum.mischiefmanager says:@Anna: I see your point. Still, though, docs collect all kinds of data that we as patients find uncomfortable to discuss-what our eating and exercise habits are, for example. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs thoroughly if they didn’t. So I wonder how we can balance the externally imposed shame that many people feel about many aspects of their health with the doctor’s responsibility to be upfront with the patient.
So let me describe, by way of example, the situation that led to the conversation my mother and I originally had about being weighed at the doctor’s office and access to healthcare.
My mother has a friend who was looking for a new OB/GYN. I’ll refer to her as Polly. When my mother heard that Polly was in the market for a new doctor she recommended her own women’s health specialist, a woman with whom my mother has had pretty good luck working with in the wake of her (successfully treated) uterine cancer.
Polly went to the doctor for an initial evaluation and reported, the next time she saw my mother, having had a negative experience. There were, according to my mother, a number of things she objected to. Some of them I actually think are important to at least offer a space to speak about, for example the intake/medical history questionnaire had a space for noting past sexual trauma. A good thing to know when you’re shortly going to be approaching the question of a pelvic exam. So I acknowledge that Polly was a difficult customer, and possibly would not have returned to the OB/GYN even if weight had not been on the table. That having been said, one of the things in her list of objections was that the doctor weighed her and raised the issue of her weight at the very first appointment.
My perspective is this: there is the perfect world (one in which body mass is but one indicator of overall health, and taking one’s weight would be akin to taking one’s temperature and listening to a patient’s lungs) and then there is the actual fat-phobic world.
In the ideal world, stepping onto a scale would be just that: stepping onto a scale. It would be one of a range of measures we used to keep track of our health and — given the over-determination of weight by genetics and environmental factors — a relatively unimportant one next to regular physical activity, a balanced diet, good vs. bad cholesterol, etc.. It might be something doctors monitored with patients who had medical conditions known to be associated with sudden weight loss or gain. Perhaps a doctor’s notes would contain estimates of body mass against which to visually check the patient in order to detect precipitous loss or gain. But there would be no need for every single visit to the doctor to be initiated by stepping onto a scale (sometimes in public spaces; I had an endocrinologist whose scale was located in the hallway behind the receptionists desk).
But we don’t live in this perfect world. We live in a world where we are culturally saturated with moral and medical panic over weight. Therefore, medical practitioners need to take into account that their patients (and the professionals themselves) are working in the context of fat-phobia, in which weight assumes overwhelming importance and often obscures more meaningful measures of health and well-being.
Did Polly “overreact” to the doctor questioning her about her weight? Possibly. Did her “overreaction” result in walking away from a doctor who might otherwise have been able to give her compassionate care? Maybe. But the burden of successful patient-doctor interactions should not lie solely with the patient. Doctors can obviously decide whether their goal is to successfully treat every patient who comes through their doors, or whether they only want the model, compliant patients who have all their culturally-conditioned feelings of shame under control. If the goal is to treat every patient, then sometimes that means meeting a patient where they are at and building up trust before challenging them on the health issues you (as the doctor) feel need to be addressed. What if instead of weighing Polly and asking her right off the bat about her weight, the OB/GYN had sat down and asked Polly about her health goals? About what brought her to the doctor that day and what her needs were? What if that first appointment was about asking questions and finding out where Polly wanted her healthcare to go … and then perhaps when some trust had been established concerns could be raised.
My suspicion is that most folks whose weight is less-than-ideal (according to cultural standards) already know. They probably can’t stop thinking about it. On a daily basis, they’re likely reduced to being the person who can’t buy clothes at a normal clothing store, who takes up “too much” room on the subway, who feels guilty having a donut at the staff meeting. Who wants to turn out the light before making love. Off the top of my head, I could name at least half a dozen women who have delayed or forgone going to their primary care provider for months — sometimes years – because they were ashamed of their weight. Perhaps if the spectre of stepping on the scale and having the nurse tut-tut or doctor hmmm over the number had not been before their eyes, they would have gone sooner — and received better preventative care.
At the end of the day, my question is less about whether weight is an important piece of the puzzle (I think it is less important than many other folks, but whatever) than it is about what the goal is. If the goal is providing high-quality healthcare to every patient, then it is clear that requiring weight-tracking through weigh-ins at every doctor’s office is a deterrent to healthcare for a large segment of the population. Possibly a segment that is highly correlated with other risk factors (poverty, depression, smoking, diabetes, etc.). Even if weight should just be one more way of tracking our bodily health, it is manifestly not value-neutral in our culture … and until it is, I’d suggest a more effective way of getting healthcare to some of those who need it most is to nix the mandatory weigh-in and allow discussions of weight to be tailored to individual patients as trust and patient-provider discussion warrant.
My suspicion is that most folks whose weight is less-than-ideal (according to cultural standards) already know. They probably can’t stop thinking about it.
Yes, absolutely. Which is why a doctor needs to be thoughtful and sensitive about how s/he approaches the topic. Or whether s/he approaches it at all—if, for example, you’re going to the doctor because you’ve got a rash or a sinus infection, there’s no reason for weight to be discussed at all.
Not to threadjack already, but I have been to more than one ob-gyn who slut-shamed me, either subtly or not-so-subtly, when I saw them for standard things like yeast infections or BCP. So I made a point of finding a good feminist practice that’s blessedly judgement-free, and spreading the word about it. But those bad experiences certainly made me understand why women might not want to go to the ob-gyn for fear of being slut-shamed, and I think it’s the same for being fat-shamed. Our society does plenty of both already, thankyouverymuch.
I can’t help but think that a lot of this boils down to one golden rule: Doctors should not act like assholes.
This raises some really important questions, but I thik you’ve missed something by not noting that in a fat phobic society, even ‘normal’ weights and women can have issue with the scale.
I was underweight (and not menstruating) for years due to a combination of restricted eating and serious ill health. I then gained around 10 pounds in quite a short space of time due to starting to eat again (admittedly in a disordered way) and when my new doctor weighed mea and compared the number to the records she just opened, she told me I needed to ease up on the weight gain because if I continued to gain ten pounds every 3 months, they’d need a crane to winch me out of the house soon.
This 10lb weight gain happened to have put me back in the healthy BMI range for the first time in 5 years and the breakthrough bleeding I had gone to see her about was my periods returning.
I reacted by going back to starving myself but introducing purging and binging for the first time and refusing to take medications that allowed me to eat properly and ‘risk’ gaining weight. The fact that this comment honed in my inner fears and came from a doctor tipped me from feeling I had any control over my body and helped trigger a spiral of self loathing and abuse I’m only just getting my head round 5 years later.
I refused to see her again though and luckily my current doc is more sympathetic but thinks I’m a crazy malingerer who seeks sympathy.
My apologies if anyone found any words I used to be either triggering or insulting.
When you’re in a large hospital setting they do weight, temperature and blood pressure, taken by a nurse, in a room, before the actual visit with the doctor. It’s their generic checklist. My GYN is in same hospital as my PCP and they check the same three things first, nurse in room, also writes down your concerns for visit, then the doc has that handy when I see her. Sometimes I’ve had intake weigh-ins in hallways although no one else was paying attention. Anyways for larger providers they tend to be generic checklists as part of their bureaucracy and longer wait time/more patients to get through. So there’s another aspect – is the office small or not.
“My suspicion is that most folks whose weight is less-than-ideal (according to cultural standards) already know. They probably can’t stop thinking about it.”
This in particular. There isn’t a requirement for routine weigh ins that I am aware of in Australia. I definitely understand why it would be deterent for seeking health care – I wouldn’t like to be weighed at every visit.
I am glad though when I see my GP, that she asks about how my life is going – am I still playing football, relationship status, etc.. I think that by having an understanding of my life (physical, emotional, psychological, etc) this enables her to be able to discern if I am healthy, and to pitch any necessary health discussions.
Oh that reminds me, I need to make an appointment for a ‘smear..
@gherkinfiend
Thank you, thank you for sharing your perspective. You’re absolutely right that even women who look “normal” on the exterior may have histories and health issues that interact badly with the routine of stepping on a scale and/or discussing weight. I’m appalled that your doctor jumped in with such a negative response to your return to health, but not surprised … have heard too many similar stories!
It’s what Becky said, being a physician doesn’t exempt you from the “don’t be an asshole” rule.
@veganmercy
I agree with you that larger practices use these routine measures as “intake” and a form of crowd control … I don’t think that makes it any more or less excusable. If anything, larger practices mean doctors are less likely to know their patients in a holistic way and MORE likely to reduce them to the numbers on their charts in their initial interactions.
When I had an eating disorder, my doctor weighed me backwards on the scale and did not comment on my weight at all. She left all weight-based conversations to my nutritionist. Now, when I see her, she still weighs me but does not comment at all. It is wonderful because I know and she knows that my weight is not reflective of my health. If there was a sudden change she might ask some questions, but that hasn’t happened. She is concerned with the things that are more reflective of my health, like my blood work, blood pressure and bone scans (I’m back to normal bone mass after having thinned bones due to the E.D.).
I think the problem is not so much the weighing, but the patient’s fear of negative comments. If patients could know their doctors is recording the weight for the record and will not comment on it unless it is a sign of a major problem, I suspect patients would not object to being weighed. However, I will say that because of my history, I am reluctant to see other doctors who might insist on things I am uncomfortable with. My doc is very good about not forcing things on me and about listening to my concerns.
@Anna: Thanks for doing a post on this! it touches a lot of matters that are important, not only fat-shaming, but the provision of health care and our role in being responsible patients.
I was surprised to hear that weighing isn’t a standard practice in Australia. Since I’m sure that patients in Oz get just as good care as we Americans do (if not better), that leads me to wonder whether there’s another way they track this information. Becky says that you don’t need to be weighed when you come in for a skin rash, but then you don’t need to have your BP taken for that either. Yet it would be remiss of the doc not to record that data.
Moreover, in our litigious country, a doc who fails to follow standard practice and misses an indicator as a result can be in big trouble.
There are ways to discuss risky behaviors and unusual numbers that don’t shame the patient, and no doctor has the right to engage in interactions like that. It’s unprofessional and unproductive. I would add, though, that as patients, we are responsible for making our expectations and boundaries clear. We can and should say to a doc that our weight is not a matter of concern for us if it isn’t.
A doc who avoids bringing up dangerous or unhealthy behaviors-again, respectfully, professionally, and without shaming-to a patient is failing that patient. Again, I think the patient should be able to say, “I smoke and I know the risks but I don’t plan to quit, so we can take this off the table.” The doc should understand and respect that. But the patient needs to speak up and define her expectations too.
I wish the medical establishment would adopt the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (http://www.drsharma.ca/edmonton-obesity-staging-system.html) It’s a medically- and scientifically-valid way of approaching the “ideal world” Anna describes in the post — a world where the number on the scale is a single piece of data that is taken in context with other data, so that the physician:
1) is assessing the patient’s health effectively and with as little bias as possible, and
2) is avoiding contributing to fat-shaming and other negative patterns (which at best annoy or hurt patients, and at worst cause them to avoid doctors entirely).
I expect that something similar to the Edmonton Scale could be developed for “underweight” patients as well. Ultimately, the number on the scale is a single piece of data that needs to be objectively and intelligently contextualized in order for it to mean ANYTHING AT ALL about an individual’s health status. And I believe that physicians ought to be held to a standard that means they get over the weight hysteria that pervades western society, and treat patients effectively.
I have seriously mixed feelings about this, but I do think it comes down to Becky’s point – don’t be an asshole.
See, I’ve been overweight or obese my whole life, and so I’ve hated going to the doctor for any reason, since it almost always turns into a conversation about my weight. (Even though my blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol have always been picture-perfect, and I eat a seriously well-balanced diet.)
I even had a new gynecologist (to whom I never went back) recommend weight loss surgery before she’d even examined me.
But I do think that monitoring weight is important, as sudden unintended drops or increases can indicate certain conditions, like the Hashimoto’s (autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid) I was diagnosed with earlier this year. I sometimes wonder if I’d have found it sooner if my PCP (who generally only weighs at annual physicals or on request) had tracked my weight when I came in for various things last year. Who knows.
It’s all so tricky and really does come down to context and trust-building.
And not being an asshole.
I have chronic pain conditions that prevent me from exercising. All that monitoring my weight does is increase my mental distress over something I cannot do anything about. I see a doctor 3-4 times a month for the above conditions. Every single time, they say “let’s go weigh you!” and I firmly and politely decline. So far I haven’t gotten much pushback, but it is stressful to have to do it every time.
Weight is treated like a primary problem when it is so often nothing more than a symptom. ‘Treating’ – or more often, shaming – weight does nothing more than obscure the real problem.
That piece of data, like blood pressure, can be indicative of a problem, and especially since we’re all so sensitive on the topic, a recent unexplained gain or loss is something the patient might not choose to raise.
Warning: this is going to get a bit ranty
That may be true, but IME, I have never once had a traditional doctor note sudden, unexplained weight gain as indicative of a health problem rather than indicative of a moral/willpower problem. Not even when I went to the doctor specifically to address said unexplained weight gain problem. I’ve had symptoms of hypothyroid for 8 years now. In that time, I’ve had 4 separate doctors completely blow me off and tell me – directly or indirectly – that I’m obviously lying about what I’m eating (1200-1400 calories or less) and how much I’m exercising (intensely, daily) because my TSH levels came back normal, so I obviously just need to try harder. Which only set me off into even more disordered eating, while still persisting to gain weight. I only just now finally went to a naturopath, who still weighed me but actually believed me when I showed her my FitDay printouts and told her how much I exercise, and is running further tests – some of which the last doctor adamantly refused to run when I specifically requested them.
My entire family is obese – my parents are/were morbidly obese – and both of them have had serious complications arise from minor conditions because they were so afraid of being fat-shamed that they resisted going to the doctor until it was too late. It may have even contributed to my father’s recent sudden death, as it appears the doctor misdiagnosed his condition.
Regular weighing may be a problem within our fat-phobic society. But I would argue that the bigger problem is the fat-phobia that runs rampant among the medical community itself. See, e.g., this recent study, which is just one of several recent studies showing endemic fat-phobia amongst doctors, and how it negatively affects overweight patients.
[/rant]
“Weight is treated like a primary problem when it is so often nothing more than a symptom. ‘Treating’ – or more often, shaming – weight does nothing more than obscure the real problem.”
THIS. After being totally average BMI my whole life, I put on 50 lbs 6yrs ago due to a worsening of my autoimmune disease which preventing me from exercising, and the new meds caused me to be hungry all the time.
Now at the dr. I get little comments about “cutting out the sweets” and “exercising when I can”, etc.
My weight is a SYMPTOM of my condition, it is NOT the main condition. Focusing on the weight is useless…. focusing on my underlying health (which my great docs do most of the time) is what will help me.
Ms M, have you let the doc know how you feel about this stuff? Have you considered changing doctors? I am in no way trying to blame you for either your illness or your doctor’s insensitivity. But I do think that we as patients tend to be more passive with our health care providers than with other providers of goods and services. That means that the docs don’t know when we’re upset with them and hence have no incentive to change the ways they interact with us.
We don’t always have a lot of choice in this country about where we get our health care. I totally understand that, and I also understand what a huge hassle it is to change docs. But I do think that we, in general, let doctors get away with saying things we’d call anyone else out on.
MM,
I am one of those rabid self-advocates. I have let my dr’s know. In my case, my dr’s are the very best I’ve found, with about 1% asshole behavior, and (usually) 99% actual medical care. I’m very privileged in that I have excellent insurance coverage, and can see who I like, for the most part.
The problem I had with doctors is that apparently losing weight is a cure all to all of my problems. Um, no it’s not, how about doing your fucking job and diagnosing the real problem?
Well done, Ms M! Although if the doc who prescribed the meds is the same one giving you a hard time about your weight, maybe he needs to review your records a little better next time you come in. *sigh*
1. As a result of me being both trans and aware of widespread transphobia in the world, I have experienced fear in advance of appointments for physical evaluations with new doctors, because of the possibility that those doctors would want to examine “sensitive” areas.
Do I think the solution is to discourage doctors from examining those areas? No. A good compromise, however, is for those examinations to take place later in the process, and for them to be preceded by an explanation of their possible importance and a query about the patient’s comfort level, with the implication that uncomfortable patients can skip that part of the visit. It seems like a similar model of care might make sense for weighing, although I don’t have enough personal experience with weight-related body dissatisfaction to say for sure.
2. You had an endocrinologist whose scale was located in the hallway behind the receptionists’ desk? Interesting – so did I.
For the bulk of my life, I have had good health insurance and have been able to go to doctors of my own choosing. Even so, I think I have had only two doctors who did not behave in ways (overt or subtle) that let me know I disgust them and who did not *relentlessly* harp upon my weight. This started as young as nine years old and at the Opthamologist, no less, who spoke to me as if I were slow and said, “Look honey, I want to tell you something, OK? Lose some weight for me. Can you do that?” So many things wrong with this and you just don’t give this kind of generic instruction to a child, FFS.
I am so often treated so poorly at doctor’s offices that I have come to the conclusion that there is something about medical school and the way doctors are taught about weight and obesity that is dysfunctional. In no other aspect of my life am I ever treated so poorly.* So in my mind, the core issue here is that doctors seem to somehow develop a malignant prejudice in our medical schools and we need to remedy this. Immediately. Stat! It is negatively affecting the health of their own patients!
So @MischiefManager, I think the reason why your seemingly reasonable point that a doctor is remiss in not discussing these things is getting push back is that I have rarely seen a doctor who is able to do this in a non-hateful way! The prejudice is just that strong. My proposal:
1) The medical community must recognize this as a problem and medical colleges must begin required courses on how to deal with your own anti-fat (and other!) prejudices.
2) Because so many doctors have shown that they do not know how to handle discussing weight with fat patients, they must be trained to delegate any talk of diet and weight to trained professionals. My thought here is Nutritionists, who often seem to have a pretty good handle on the social and emotional part of weight and obesity. I have noticed that some clinics have already started to do this. It puts the “problem” in the hands of a professional specifically trained for this. Win-win! If the patient is at the point of truly dangerous obesity, the Nutritionist (or designated health professional) would ideally act as the fat patient’s advocate in their dealings with the doctor. (Regarding the point about doctors being concerned about being remiss/being sued: They didn’t “do nothing” if this proposal is followed. They FOLLOWED protocol!)
While I personally don’t mind being weighed at the doctor’s office, I actually think that at this point in our culture NOT WEIGHING does far more good on the whole than weighing. Weighing every time waves a big red flag about an already explosive topic and I suspect it somehow reinforces doctor’s existing prejudices, though I don’t know how, exactly.
* An interesting side note is that dentists are often quite kind to me. I’m one of the few people you might meet that does not hate going to the dentist!
‘A recent unexplained gain or loss is something the patient might not choose to raise.’
I went to the doctor last year as I had a lingering virus (I was over-worked) and one of the questions my doctor asked me was if I had recently lost weight without changing my lifestyle (I can’t remember her exact wording), she was satisfied with my answer and didn’t weigh me. Seeing as cancer and depression (both of which run in my family) have unexplained weight loss as a symptom, I don’t think ignoring weight completely is right. However, I have nothing more to say on the limits of weight as the sole marker of health better than this: http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/so-my-doctor-tried-to-kill-me/
I have only ever been weighed when registering with a new surgery, although I wonder if local health priorities affect the doctor or nurse’s reaction. At 25 and just overweight on the BMI scale, a nurse criticised my weight, but not the amount I drank. At the time I was living in a borough where a large percentage of the population is judged to be overweight. 5 years later, I live in a borough with fewer ‘overweight’ people, I drink much less than I did at 25 and am currently just obese. When I registered with a new GP practise, the nurse didn’t say anything about my weight but did suggest I was drinking too much.
I had an interesting discussion about this matter today. I work in the research end of a medical facility of the federal government. My boss is a physician. I raised this with him and some colleagues today. I wasn’t surprised at the initial dismissal by my boss, who is a white, right-wing male. But I was surprised when a female (not a doc) suggested that the phenomenon of women deferring doctor visits out of fear of weight-shaming was, to her mind, probably a class-related phenomenon. She argued that the harder it is to get medical care at all, the less likely it is that the patient will worry about something like this.
Any thoughts? I have a gut feeling that she’s wrong, but I have no evidence on either side.
Aww… Thanks for taking my complaints all the way to the TOP, MM! Regarding the class issue, my guess is that if you don’t have health insurance and have saved up for a particular visit, you probably are just happy to have something rather than nothing, if that makes sense. You’re probably willing to deal with a little crummy behavior rather than nothing, too.
I just don’t know. Perhaps we expect too much of doctors. I know my suggestion above is pretty pie-in-the-sky (and sounded mean and derogatory towards doctors, I’m sorry about that, just frustrated and angry when I think about this issue) but I really believe it’s the right way to go. Doctors simply can’t “treat” this problem alone and I think that’s part of the problem. They can set a broken arm, heal an infection with antibiotics, remove a tumor, but this issue is much more complex and resistant to treatment. I think I might find it frustrating, too, if I were a doctor!
@mm – that is interesting. I would think that it is possible for it to be a class issue.. but there are also arguments on the other side for it not to be as well. (For eg, if you are going to get weighed, and are ashamed about weight and don’t want to be weighed, regardless of how good or not insurance is – I don’t see why in either case you would want to visit the dr unless you absolutely had to.)
Various studies have found, in Australia with our system of socialised medicine, that there is a class element (lower income households are less likely to visit a dr than higher income households), and a gendered element (the research uses the binary gender nomenclature, men are less likely to see a dr than women).
(edit – “and are ashamed about weight”, should read “and are shamed about weight”.. ie that drs/medical specialists shame a person about their weight..)
@PetiteXL: I don’t think you’re off-base or overly harsh at all. The relationship between doctors and patients is based on an extremely unhealthy, paternalistic model of interaction. It’s all active, controlling, demanding on the doc’s side, and all passive, controlled, accepting on the patient’s, to put it in a very simplified way. The doc traditionally has all the information and the patient has none. This has created a situation in which the patient has learned not to speak up for herself. It also teaches docs to see patients as helpless, ignorant, often irrational children.
But there’s no inherent reason it has to be that way. Especially these days with easy access to medical information, patients have little excuse to allow this interaction to continue. In a sense, you can’t blame the docs for taking control when we cede it-they’re taught to fix problems. So both med schools and patients have to recreate the interaction so it’s more egalitarian. It’s going to take time, but if we, the patients, demand it, change will come.
Nothing in the traditional model, of course, requires docs to be insulting, cruel, or insensitive. I know some med schools have been trying to teach students to be more aware of the experience of the patient, holding classes in which the students practice on pretend patients and taking turns acting as patients themselves. Hospitals are also teaching ethics classes, which can only be a good thing.
Serious question which could be totally moot since I have no medical knowledge: Isn’t the weigh-in necessary if a doctor is going to prescribe something for you, in order to determine the correct dosage? If so, it seems more convenient to have one scale at which people are weighed before an appointment than either a scale in every exam room or to have people get weighed in the middle/after their appointment.