PICOT -- Arthritis & Obesity The Healthy People 2020 objectives for people who suffer from arthritis are focused on reducing the number of individuals who experience pain, limited activity in general, limited capacity to attend to daily affairs, and disability that prevents or impacts employment, and so on. The nexus of the Healthy People 2020 objectives and the role of the advanced care nurse offers a valuable opportunity to help patients with arthritis establish healthy exercise habits that help them lose weight and, accordingly, reduce their arthritis symptoms.

Advance practice nurses are in a position to provide educational information about chronic disease related to obesity, and to support patients' ability to problem solve about lifestyle changes that can foster health. Moreover, the advance practice nurse is likely to obtain the vitals for the patient during an office visit, which would include current height and weight measures. Further discussion about symptoms of osteoarthritis paves the way to problem solving about how to integrate exercise into the patient's daily routine for weight loss and increased functioning.

Promising research indicates that brief counseling sessions with primary care physicians on the relation between an individual's weight, exercise habits, and overall health do tend to influence patients...

An important aspect of the counseling and advise appears to be an ancillary discussion of the barriers to increased activity and physical exercise. The critical element that contributes to a successful intervention is a frank discussion about the barriers that make exercise difficult and how to diminish their impact or eliminate them altogether.
Further discussion in this paper includes a review of the literature that involves a literature search on the primary topic, critical appraisal of the research, summaries of relevant research, and recommendations for intervention that has been derived from the literature review.

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), obesity affects nearly 36% of adults in America and 17% of children. Indeed, the problem of obesity has grown so large that experts estimate that nearly 10% of the national health care budget can be accounted for by treatments related to obesity. The relation between obesity and chronic diseases, such as certain types of cancer, heart disease, metabolic disease, osteoarthritis, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, has been well established in the research.

In 2012, the Institute of Medicine released a report, Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention, which served as…