Dr. Eva Orsmond:

I conducted research on the need for weight management among hospital staff members in Loughlinstown hospital in 2000-2001 with Dr. Donal O'Shea. I assessed 260 out of 350 members of staff, including doctors, nurses and hospital staff members. I showed that the hospital staff members were not doing any better than the rest of the population, which is totally understandable. From a public health perspective, these people are going to be the starting point for change because they are the ones who make the first intervention. They are the ones who get advice from a public health perspective.

I am from Finland and worked and lived there for many years. The Scandinavian countries have good public health outcomes and money is spent on prevention. I am not here to look at the weight of doctors, but they are living in this society and their overweight levels are similar to the rest of the population. It is very unlikely overweight and obese doctors will raise in their professional capacity an issue of weight or lifestyle if they themselves do not feel they are a good example. It is very difficult. We need to provide the knowledge and education on nutrition to help hospital staff members and medical professionals. This is the point I was focusing on - knowledge and education. At present, doctors have very little if any nutritional education as part of their curriculum. Children do not learn anything about nutrition or food unless they take home economics. Even if we are raising awareness of the numbers, we all know we have an obesity epidemic so we do not need to do more research on that. We know it already but what step follows highlighting the problems? Who gives the advice and what advice is given? Even if we put the calories on the menus, people still need to understand that calories on their own do not mean anything, one needs to look at the protein, vitamin and mineral content of the menu. My concern is that concentrating on counting calories without considering the nutritional content could lead to other problems. In the end I believe in the fact that everything starts from the family. I am the mother of two children, but we need to have the professional giving support to families. That is what I mean by support from doctors, nurses and teachers. Anybody who has children knows how difficult it is to bring up children. Once they go out their front door they are standing against the world. It is not always an easy place.