Obesity bias and stigma, attitudes and beliefs among entry-level physiotherapy students in the Republic of Ireland: a cross sectional study

Objective To explore entry-level physiotherapy students' attitudes and beliefs relating to weight bias and stigmatisation in healthcare. Design Cross sectional survey of physiotherapy students. Methods All final year physiotherapy students (n = 215) enrolled in entry-level physiotherapy programmes in the Republic of Ireland were invited to participate. Each received a questionnaire, consisting of 72 questions, within four key sections. Descriptive statistics and frequencies were used to analyse the data. Results A response rate of 83% (179/215) was achieved. Whilst physiotherapy students, overall, had a positive attitude towards people with obesity, 29% had a negative attitude towards people with obesity, 24% had a negative attitude towards managing this population and most (74%) believed obesity was caused by behavioural and individual factors. Over one third of students (35%) reported that they would not be confident in managing patients with obesity and more than half (54%) felt treating patients with obesity was not worthwhile. Conclusion This study provides preliminary findings to suggest that weight stigma-reduction efforts are warranted for physiotherapy students. Helping students to understand that obesity is a complex, chronic condition with multiple aspects requiring a multi-faceted approach to its management might be the first step towards dispelling these negative attitudes towards patients living with obesity. Inclusion of a formal obesity curriculum should perhaps now be part of the contemporary physiotherapy students' education. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).