Opinion: Doctors, practice what you preach

Not surprisingly, patients treated by doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers who are overweight and stressed out—even smoking—may say to themselves that a healthy lifestyle is just too hard—"If they can't do it, how can I?" To combat this problem, two John Hopkins medical students recently launched a grassroots campaign to urge fellow medical and nursing students, as well as practicing clinicians, to practice what they should be preaching. They want healthcare professionals to sign The Patient Promise, a personal—and public—commitment "to lead by example and practice healthy lifestyle behaviors comparable to those I would ask of my patient."