Who gets what treatment for obesity? A survey of GPs in Scotland

To describe the types and delivery of obesity treatment currently favoured by General Practitioners (GPs) working in Scotland.

Representative cross-sectional survey using a postal questionnaire which included case stories as stimuli for questions about the GPs' nutrition guidance to overweight female patients.

A systematic sample of 1400 general practitioners (GPs) from a total of 3593 GPs working in Scotland in 1997.

From 1363 eligible GPs, 609 returned the full questionnaire and a further 132 took part in a telephone mini-interview. Net response was 54.4% (741/1363). Almost half of the GPs (45.6%) reported that they had read the recent national clinical guideline for integrating obesity prevention with weight management (SIGN 1996). The majority of GPs (89.6%) agreed that nutrition has an important role to play in the management of disease and 82.4% agreed that they can offer healthy eating advice to patients. However, only 34.8% of GPs believed that they had been successful in treating overweight patients. Routinely used treatments involve either a dietitian, practice nurse and/or a commercial slimming group and realistic weight loss was considered one criteria of successful treatment by some GPs. Age, year qualified and location of practice were found to have little influence over variations in GP treatment while weak associations between gender of GP and treatment were found.

The readership of the clinical guidelines in Scotland has been moderate so far although a multidisciplinary approach to obesity treatment is recognised. Further investigations of any relationships between nutrition education-obesity treatment are needed.