Are physicians predisposed to think differently of, or even be more attentive to, patients who take better care of themselves vs. patients who do not (i.e. smoke, drink, are overweight, etc.)?
Yes. The question is whether they can overcome that predisposition and provide the best care they can. But a lot of other things also influence that relationship: the age of the patient, whether the patient is polite to staff and/or the doctor, and on and on.
There’re challenges right now in educating physicians to overcome the widespread frustration and even dismissal of patients who “deserve” their problems by “being fat,” smoking, or whatever.
In my job, 100 percent of my time is spent managing patients who are already sick (I run a team of hospitalists at a teaching hospital). In many of those patients, the consequences of smoking, or drinking, or being obese, or of having been sedentary (which are by no means mutually exclusive and, in fact, seem to cluster), are evident - lung cancer, heart disease, diabetes with all the complications, etc., etc.
I am proud to say that each and every one of our patients gets the best and most comprehensive care we can deliver whether they smoked 3 packs a day for forty years or have never tasted meat, tobacco, or booze.
All of my colleagues could say the same.