Let’s say you gained a bit of weight since your last physical. You know it, deep down at least, but you don’t really want to talk about. You’ve convinced yourself that it’s just a phase.
It’s one thing to have your doctor point it out to you in the exam room. But what if, at home later that night, you open your computer and see it written right there on your chart: “Patient is approaching an unhealthy weight.” What if the doctor used the loaded (if medically accurate) word “obese”?
Before granting open access to their medical notes online through OpenNotes, many doctors expressed concern over this very possibility. Sure, it’s their job to make sure their observations about their patients’ health are known, but they understandably don’t want to come off as offensive. Once they knew patients would be able to peek at what they were writing, some switched over to the more neutral phrase “body mass index.”
Read Lindsay Abrams’ article here.
