It was therefore often easier to avoid raising weight as a concern during antenatal consultations.
One strategy to raise weight awareness was to measure body size or weight and then to move on to presenting facts about the association with ill-health.
Many appeared to respect and trust health professionals' knowledge, expertise and authority, and agreed that they should raise weight issues with patients.
Clinicians asserted that their main concern was to deal with the patients presenting problem, which often restricted the opportunity to raise weight as an additional issue.
Alternatively, to avoid overlooking potential targets, increased sensitivity can be achieved by raising weight factor to at least 1.0 (sensitivity = 75%).
Health professionals have an important role to play in the management of obesity, but may be unsure how to raise weight issues with patients.
Although British PNs were more likely to raise weight issues than GPs, only 9% self-reported to present solutions or discuss health promotion [ 38], and weight management seems to be based on brief opportunistic intervention undertaken mainly by PNs [ 39].
Both practitioners [ 16, 19] and parents [ 30] have reported that growth charts can be useful in objectively raising weight related concerns, as long as the terminology used is acceptable.
Hildingsson and Thomas [ 27] hypothesised that this may be due to midwives' reluctance to raise weight issues throughout pregnancy care, leading to a generally positive experience among higher-BMI women who desire the focus in their maternity care to be placed on their pregnancies and births, and not their weight.
Because parental receptiveness and maintaining rapport with parents is the key driver of nurse obesity prevention practices, improving behaviour change counselling skills will be critical to nurses raising weight related concerns with parents and addressing sensitive topics such as limiting screen time.
