Deciding to Seek Emergency Care for Acute Myocardial Infarction

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how patients who experience acute myocardial infarction (AMI) decide to seek emergency care. Fifty patients with AMI were interviewed at two hospitals in Lebanon. The perspective of 22 witnesses of the attack was also sought about the cardiac event. The themes that transpired from the data were as follows: making sense of the symptoms, waiting to see what happens, deciding to come to the hospital, and the family influenced the decision to seek care. The witnesses of the cardiac event, mostly family members, supported the decision to seek emergency care. Deciding to seek emergency care for AMI is complex. Nurses must solicit their patients' perception of the cardiac event to provide them with tailored education and counseling about heart attack symptoms and how to respond to them in case they recur. Family members must be included in the education process.

Patients' knowledge and attitudes about myocardial infarction

“…Waiting out of concern for cost of care is in line with the findings of Dumit, Noureddine, and Magilvy (2016). The fact that only 26% expressed financial concern in this study could be explained by It is worth noting that the participants' responses about what they would do if they experience a heart attack did not concur with the response strategies they reported in the qualitative study during their hospitalization (Noureddine, Dumit, & Saab, 2015). One example is the 24 participants (48%) who reported waiting for symptoms to go during the heart attack in the qualitative study versus only 10 participants (20%) who reported that they would wait to be sure before going to hospital in this study.…”

“…Inpatient and outpatient services must coordinate patient education. Family members need to be included, as most adults in Lebanon live with their families and healthcare decisions are often made in a collectivist manner, as transpired from the qualitative interviews done with this sample (Noureddine et al, ). Nevertheless, standard information giving is not enough.…”

Resuscitation of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims in Lebanon: The experience and views of prehospital providers

“…This is in line with studies of cardiac patients in Lebanon that found that people often prefer driving to the hospital rather than waiting for an ambulance to come. [ 12 13 ]…”

The Adherence to Healthy Lifestyle Among Arab Patients With Cardiovascular Disease: Mixed-Method Review

“…The participants in the included studies were either Muslims or Christians. Five studies were conducted in Jordan (Al-Ali & Haddad, 2004;Al-Hassan & Wierenga, 2000;Elshatarat et al, 2013;Mosleh & Almalik, 2016;Mosleh & Darawad, 2015), four studies in Lebanon (Dumit, Magilvy, & Afifi, 2016;Dumit, Noureddine, & Magilvy, 2016;Noureddine et al, 2015;Walsh et al, 2017), one in Israel (Reges et al, 2013), one in Qatar (Donnelly et al, 2012) and one in Saudi Arabia (Al-Khadra et al, 1992), see online supplementary Appendix 1.…”