Dignity and Respect: People-First Language with Regard to Obesity

Excerpt

In their article “Impact of Bariatric Surgery in Reducing Macrovascular Complications in Severely Obese T2DM Patients” [1], Hussain and colleagues perform a meta-analysis that shows bariatric surgery reduced macrovascular complications and all-cause mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and severe obesity. Although this article helps clarify the benefits of bariatric surgery for this patient population, the authors neglected to use people-first language throughout their paper with “severely obese T2DM patients” within the title as well as repeatedly throughout the text. These phrases equate individuals with their conditions instead of recognizing their humanity, which suggests that the individual is the disease rather than has the disease and denies patients proper dignity and respect. …