Gender perceptions and their impact when referring obese patients for exercise

Abstract

Abstract:Obesity trends in the UK have shown a steady increase over the past 20 years, yet differences have been identified in the uptake and adherence data for obese men and women attending exercise referral schemes (ERS). Moreover, evidence suggests that health professionals (HPs) may hold preconceived gender specific views about their patients and this has been identified as a potential barrier to male patients seeking help from their GPs for chronic conditions. The aim of this paper is to examine the gender dynamics associated with health profession/patient interactions in relation to the uptake of an ERS for obese patients.The ERS in question was based in a Primary Care Health Centre in the South West of England. The respondent cohort comprised 12 patients (8 women, 4 men) aged 55-74 years and their 6 referring HPs (4 women, 2 men). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients and HPs over an eight month period and the data were analysed via a grounded theory approach. The study found that HP gender specific perceptions of their patients had an impact on the methods used to encourage patients to participate. HPs typically adopted a direct interactional approach with obese men and a more cautious approach with obese women. Irrespective of gender, male and female patients found being informed of their obesity difficult to accept. The paper concludes that there is a need for a degree of care to be taken when communicating such health concerns and that this kind of approach may lead to increased ERS attendance (and adherence) by men.

Ethical leadership in multinational companies’ control practices: culture as a moderating factor

“…We sought the development of theory grounded in our research data, organizing it, fragmenting it into manageable units, synthesizing it, searching for and constructing patterns, discovering what was emergent and for conveying outcomes, as inherent and in integral parts of the processes of analysis and theory building. Inductive analysis of data, meaning that the critical themes surface from data (Patton, 1990), requires some element of creativity to organize raw data into logical, meaningful categories and to examine them in holistic and interactive ways.…”

“…In qualitative research, moderation is synonymous with interaction. In other words, moderating factors are those that can alter the direction of an investigated relationship or provide additional explanations about such relationships (Queen et al , 2016). Queen et al (2016) argued that the effects of a moderator on existing relationships can be successfully analyzed through inter alia semi-structured interviews.…”