Evidence and/or Experience-Based Knowledge in Lifestyle Treatment of Patients Diagnosed as Obese?

Abstract

Proceeding from a phenomenological perspective, this study investigates how physiotherapists’ experience-based knowledge acquires significance in their encounters with patients diagnosed as obese. Presenting the thematic accounts of three physiotherapists, this paper illuminates how they make use of experiences from both their own life as well as experiences from learning and doing physiotherapy. This multifaceted experience-based knowledge is significant for making individual adjustments in a group-based programme. In line with these findings, the authors question whether the therapeutic method itself can be given such a prime position in defining best evidence in evidence-based practice. In concluding, they call for a re-consideration of the term evidence. More precisely, it is argued that what will be “effective” therapy for a person diagnosed as obese cannot be reduced to external evidence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Synne Groven

Karen Synne Groven is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Physiotherapy at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, and holds a postdoctoral position in the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Oslo, where she is currently engaged in a project exploring adolescents’ experiences of participating in a group-based lifestyle programme.

Associate Professor Groven’s active research interests are in the fields of obesity, chronic illness and pain problems. In this regard, her research approach also focuses on evidence-based treatment interventions, including conservative and surgical interventions as experienced from both patients’ and health professionals’ perspectives. Her doctoral research focused on women’s life-situation following weight-loss surgery.

Kristin Heggen

Kristin Heggen is a Professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Oslo, and is currently serving as Dean of Education in the Faculty of Medicine.

Professor Heggen’s research interests comprise ethical issues and power dynamics in health care as well as medical humanities, and issues concerning education and knowledge transfer between academic and clinical settings. She is particularly interested in the foundations of evidence-based medicine and “knowledge translation” as an intellectual, social and discursive process, especially in the domains of the humanities, social sciences and educational research.