Help seeking for cardiac symptoms: Beyond the masculine–feminine binary

Abstract

Empirical and theoretical literature suggests that stereotypical gender roles shape men's and women's health help-seeking behavior, and plays an important role in the treatment seeking delays of cardiac patients. We were interested in exploring the ways in which gender informs the experiences and help-seeking behavior of men and women who experienced the symptoms associated with acute cardiac events. We undertook 20 in-depth interviews between October 2007 and July 2008 with 11 men and 9 women recently diagnosed with an acute coronary syndrome in British Columbia, Canada. Participants were encouraged to tell their 'story' of the event that led to hospitalization and diagnosis, with a focus on the symptoms and decision making processes that occurred before and during the activation of health services: seeking the advice of others including colleagues, family members and healthcare professionals; calling 911; and attending an emergency department. Although we anticipated that distinctive patterns of help-seeking behavior aligned with stereotypical masculine and feminine ideals might emerge from our data, this was not always the case. We found some evidence of the influence of gender role ideology on the help-seeking behavior of both male and female participants. However, men's and women's experiences of seeking health care were not easily parsed into distinct binary gender patterns. Behavior that might stereotypically be considered to be 'masculine' or 'feminine' gender practice was shared by both male and female participants. Our findings undermine simple binary distinctions about gendered help-seeking prevalent in the literature, and contribute towards setting the direction of the future health policy and research agenda addressing the issue of gender and health help-seeking behavior.

The Male Face of Caregiving

“…Gender comparisons can inadvertently reify dominant ideals of masculinity and femininity in ways that ignore the diversity and efforts of many who take up or purposely employ "other" actions. The work of Galdas, Johnson, Percy, and Ratner (2010) reminds us that gender similarities are important to apprehend-especially as the field seeks to transition descriptive work toward interventions. In summary, the absence of potentially unifying and enriching theoretical frameworks continues to be a significant gap in the research literature.…”

A systematic review and metaethnography to identify how effective, cost-effective, accessible and acceptable self-management support interventions are for men with long-term conditions (SELF-MAN)

“…A body of recent work has begun to question the simplistic link between constructions of hegemonic masculinity and men's health-care practices. 239 Evidence of the fluid and contextually dependent nature of gender in the wider body of men's health literature 240,241 suggests that the studies included in our review may not adequately capture the complexity of how masculinities intersect with men's health behaviour. Thus, there is unlikely to be a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to gender-sensitising self-management support for men.…”

Gender Inequalities in Health Over the Life Course. Attitudes Towards III-Health in Men and Women Treated for Childhood Cancer

“…While some women also displayed passive and fatalistic values about health, some men contested masculine norms, showing the limits of an essentialist concept of gender. In their study of help seeking for cardiac symptoms, Galdas et al (2010) also demonstrated that while some individuals explicitly positioned their behaviour during the cardiac event as stereotypical of their gender, some behaviours that might be stereotypically considered as masculine or feminine practices were shared by both male and female participants. These results remind us that gender is not always central in the doing of health.…”