Original Research

Views of Primary Care Physicians Regarding the Promotion of Healthy Lifestyles and Weight Management Among Their Patients

Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management. 2017 June;24(6)

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Participants endorsed a number of perceived barriers to helping patients adhere to a health-promoting lifestyle and maintain a healthy weight. The most common barriers reported, as shown in Table 2 , include (a) not enough time (72%); (b) patients not interested in improving their weight (52%); and (c) lack of adequate referral resources for diet, physical activity, and weight management (48%). The participating physicians also endorsed certain practice-related improvements that they felt would help them improve their patients’ engagement in health-promoting behaviors (healthy eating and physical activity) and weight. These improvements, as shown in Table 3 , include (a) better tools to communicate diet, physical activity, or weight problems to patients or family (48%); (b) better mechanisms to connect patients to specific referral sources (44%); and (c) better counseling tools to guide patients towards lifestyle modification (36%).

Overall, 88% of participating physicians strongly agreed that it was their responsibility to promote a healthy diet, physical activity, and weight loss and healthy weight maintenance among their patients. In contrast, 4% of the participating physicians strongly disagreed with this statement.

Approximately 88% of the participating physicians agreed that patients were more likely to adopt healthier lifestyles if their health care providers counseled them to do so (44% strongly agreed, 44% agreed somewhat). A majority of participating physicians endorsed the view that there are effective strategies and/or tools to (a) help patients eat a healthy diet (56% strongly agreed, 24% agreed somewhat), (b) engage in adequate amounts of physical activity (56% strongly agreed, 20% agreed somewhat), and (c) maintain a healthy weight or lose weight (48% strongly agreed,

32% agreed somewhat). Only 4% of participating physicians neither agreed nor disagreed with this view and 4% somewhat disagreed with this view.

Many participating physicians expressed confidence in their ability to counsel their patients to (a) eat a healthy diet (64% strongly agreed, 28% agreed somewhat), (b) engage in adequate amounts of physical activity (68% strongly agreed, 24% agreed somewhat), and (c) maintain a healthy weight or lose weight (60% strongly agreed, 32% agreed somewhat). Most participating physicians at least somewhat agreed that they were effective at helping their patients (a) eat a healthy diet (24% strongly agreed, 52% agreed somewhat), (b) engage in adequate amounts of physical activity (20% strongly agreed, 56% agreed somewhat), and (c) maintain a healthy weight or lose weight (16% strongly agreed, 48% agreed somewhat). Some participating physicians expressed ambivalence about whether or not they were effective at helping their patients (a) eat a healthy diet (16% neither agreed nor disagreed), (b) engage in adequate amounts of physical activity (12% neither agreed nor disagreed), and (c) maintain a healthy weight or lose weight (20% neither agreed nor disagreed). A total of 8% of participating physicians did not endorse the belief that they were effective at helping their patients maintain a healthy weight or lose weight.

Most participating physicians at least somewhat agreed that they were effective in encouraging patients to engage in health-promoting activities (44% strongly agreed, and 44% agreed somewhat), whereas 4% neither agreed nor disagreed that they were effective in providing this encouragement. Interestingly, many participating physicians endorsed the view that they would be able to provide more credible and effective counseling to patients if they (the physicians themselves) ate a healthy diet (68% strongly agreed, 20% agreed somewhat) and engaged in adequate amounts of physical activity (68% strongly agreed, 20% agreed somewhat). A minority of participating physicians (4%) neither agreed or disagreed with this perspective.