Article

Obesity is regarded as a modern lifestyle problem, causing illness,
stigma, discrimination, and psychological problems. To help patients avoid these
problems, physiotherapists increasingly engage in lifestyle programs specialized
in weight loss. OBJECTIVE: To explore how physiotherapists' encounters with
patients diagnosed as "obese" acquire significance for their development as
clinicians. METHOD: The material draws on semi-structured interviews with eight
physiotherapists. We conducted a thematic analysis inspired by van Manen's
hermeneutic-phenomenological approach combined with Kvale and Brinkman's critical
approach. FINDINGS: The analysis identified the following four themes:
1) Striving to find one's own style of communication;
2) Relating to bodily
discrepancies; 3) Developing clinical competence through bodily encounters; and
4) Gaining insight into the dilemmas of group-based lifestyle programs. Taken
together, our findings highlight bodily encounters between patients and
physiotherapists as an invaluable source of insight. Such insight can shape
physiotherapists' development as clinicians inspiring them to develop their
unique ways of communicating so that patients diagnosed as obese can feel
empowerment rather than failure and shame. At the same time, our findings point
to the need of critically reflecting on ones' own approach entering a double role
of both controller and supporter. As such, our findings complicate and extend
previous work on stigma and shame. CONCLUSION: Our research leads us to conclude
that more emphasis on critical thinking in physiotherapy is necessary. We suggest
that this should be given more priority in research, education, as well as in clinical practice.

Langue : ANGLAIS