Educating Obese Patients through Imaging

Introduction

This paper explores the ways in which medical images could be used to educate obese patients in order to initiate a healthy lifestyle change. Obesity incidence and prevalence has increased dramatically in adults since the 1970's. Nurse practitioners, as primary health care providers, are in an excellent position to intervene in the obesity epidemic. Very little is known about the factors that influence nurse practitioners' practice in the management of adult obesity. This study sought to better understand the relationships among factors that impact, explain, and predict nurse practitioners' perceived self-efficacy in obesity treatment (Furlong 2005). To better understand these relationships, self-efficacy theory, as incorporated into the Health Belief Model (HBM), was used as the study's guiding framework. According to the HBM, low self-efficacy was a barrier to engaging in health-related activities. Modifying factors such as prior attitudes, beliefs, and demographic characteristics were theorized to influence self-efficacy perception. Nurses can play a vital role in improve outcomes of obese patients by explaining the fundamentals of the disease and stressing on the controllable risk factors while they educate their patients. The purpose is to generate an evidence that imaging education provided to patients could generate positive health outcomes in obese people.

Hypothesis

Showing medical images of obesity to an obese patient, while providing education as to what the images mean for the patient's current and future health, would lead to an increase in healthy lifestyle changes.

Literature Review

Obesity is a relative increase in body weight relative to height and can be caused by increased body fat or water retention. Physical activity and nutritional balance can keep the body from getting obese, as long as there is no disease to increase water retention and fatty tissue. The causes of obesity are varied and are often associated, it is impossible to lose weight to address all the causes of their increase. Obesity, in the absence of adequate and timely treatment, causes serious cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic diseases, which can even be fatal. It has been well reported in the lay press that obesity has reached epidemic proportions. It is estimated that somewhere between fifth and one third of people, most of which are children, are obese. Obesity is now significant factor for increased morbidity and mortality in adults as well. Being a multi-organ problem, obesity a wide range of diseases and psychosocial problems, and those related to musculoskeletal system. Turning to obesity in a health care background calls for the refinement of emphatic, realizing and interacting as often as possible with the patient and the care providers, including the nursing staff. Implementation of an approach based on patient and healthcare relationship is crucial since obesity and adiposis cause denouncing circumstances for many patients. In fact, obese people go through a practice of aspersion and execration that is so permeating as to represent polite oppressiveness.

Obesity poses multiple challenges for imaging for other diseases and medical imaging as well (Uppot et al 2007). Most children hospitals are geared toward dealing with the small end of ...