Can you sugar-coat it for me, Doc? Medical professionals BANNED from telling fat patients they are OBESE – so can you guess what weightier phrase they must use instead?

  • NSW Health has instructed doctors to avoid telling fat patients they're obese
  • The new guidelines are designed to stop larger people from being offended 
  • Australian Medical Association said the new policy was 'sugar coating' issue

By STEPHEN JOHNSON, ECONOMICS REPORTER, AUSTRALIA

Published: | Updated:

Doctors are being instructed to avoid mentioning the word 'obese' to their overweight patients.

New South Wales Health has released new guidelines designed to stop larger people from being offended.

It calls on doctors to tell their obese patients they are 'well above a healthy weight', The Daily Telegraph reports.

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Showing some guts: NSW Health is telling doctors to avoid using the word 'obese' to patients

Showing some guts: NSW Health is telling doctors to avoid using the word 'obese' to patients

General practitioners are also told to refrain from uttering the words 'morbidly obese' or to apportion blame or judgement.

NSW Health's executive director of the Centre for Population Health, Jo Mitchell, told the newspaper said the new guidelines were based on advice from health experts and parents.

'It's just using language which is more engaging,' she told News Corp.

However the Australian Medical Association said NSW Health was just 'sugar coating' the issue of obesity.

'Sometimes it is important not to sugar-coat this,' the AMA's state president Brad Frankum said.

'Sometimes people need to be made really aware of the dangers they are facing.

'The word obese is a medical term.' 

NSW Health bureaucrats want to see the back of words like 'obese' and morbidly obese'

NSW Health bureaucrats want to see the back of words like 'obese' and morbidly obese'

The Australian Medical Association was bulging with criticism of NSW Health's new policy

The Australian Medical Association was bulging with criticism of NSW Health's new policy

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