Do children with obesity have worse table manners? Associations between child table manners, weight status and weight gain.

BACKGROUND: Children with obesity experience stigma stemming from stereotypes, one such stereotype is that people with obesity are "sloppy" or have poor manners. Teaching children "proper table manners" has been proposed as an obesity prevention strategy. Little is known about the association between children's weight status and table manners. OBJECTIVES: To examine correlates of child table manners and to examine the association of child table manners with child obese weight status and prospective change in child body mass index z-score (BMIz). METHODS: Mother-child dyads (N = 228) participated in a videotaped laboratory eating task with cupcakes. Coding schemes to capture child table manners (making crumbs, chewing with mouth open, getting food on face, shoving food in mouth, slouching, and getting out of seat), and maternal attentiveness to child table manners, were reliably applied. Anthropometrics were measured at baseline and at follow-up two years later. Regression analyses examined the association of participant characteristics with child table manners, as well as the associations of child table manners with child obese weight status, and prospective change in BMIz/year. RESULTS: Predictors of poorer child table manners were younger child age, greater cupcake consumption, and greater maternal attentiveness to child table manners. Poorer child table manners were not associated with child obese (vs. not) weight status, but were associated with a prospective decrease in BMIz/year in children with overweight/obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Obesity interventions to improve table manners may be perpetuating unfavorable stereotypes and stigma. Future work investigating these associations is warranted to inform childhood obesity guidelines around table manners.

Dermatologist demographics and patient satisfaction: A single-center survey study.

BACKGROUND: Patient satisfaction is a proxy for quality clinical care. Understanding the factors that drive patient satisfaction scores is important because they are publicly reported, may be used in determining hospital and physician compensation, and may allow patients to preselect physicians. OBJECTIVE: This single-center survey study of adult patients at the Michigan Medicine outpatient dermatology clinics aimed to investigate how patients respond differently to theoretical dermatologic scenarios with varying dermatologist gender. METHODS: Each questionnaire contained one of four clinical scenarios illustrating overall positive or negative encounters with a male or female dermatologist, followed by questions derived from the Press Ganey survey to assess patient satisfaction. RESULTS: A total of 452 completed questionnaires were collected. There were statistically significant differences in overall patient satisfaction scores between positive versus negative female and positive versus negative male dermatologists, but there were no differences in scores between positive female and positive male dermatologists or between negative female and negative male dermatologists. There were also no differences in overall scores after controlling for patient demographic characteristics or patient-dermatologist gender concordance. CONCLUSION: Previous studies have suggested that male physicians receive better patient satisfaction scores compared to female physicians. However, our study found that, in response to hypothetical scenarios of positive and negative dermatology encounters, dermatologist gender did not affect any domain of patient satisfaction scores. Limitations include the use of hypothetical patient-dermatologist encounters and possible lack of generalizability because the study was conducted at one academic center in southeast Michigan with a predominantly Caucasian patient population.