Last week for Body Positive University 101, we talked about 6 things that plus-size patients want medical care providers to know. There is plenty of systemic change that needs to happen to make medical care more accessible to all people, but in the meantime we can beef up on our medical self-advocacy in order to get some (or maybe all?) of our needs met as patients.
Medical self-advocacy is your right as a patient. It shows up in many interactions: from the very first one all the way through the years of treatment we receive as patients. Today we’ll be focusing on the very first interaction with a new medical care provider: the introductory exchange, which can help set the tone of the relationship or help you feel out whether this provider will be easy or challenging to work with.