Teaching women about heart attack may save lives
Many women delay seeking care for heart attack because they miss the subtle warning signs, and this raises their risk of death or grave disability.Melanie Kalman PhD, an associate professor in Upstate‘s College of Nursing, is working to change that. In collaboration with a researcher at Binghamton University, she has created acronyms -- CURB and FACTSS -- to help women remember the warning signs and common symptoms of heart attack. Their project, called “Matters of Your Heart,” looks at whether teaching women about the early warning signs of heart attack can help improve their response to symptoms.
“Women have chest pain,” Kalman says, “but usually not the crushing chest pain. It‘s usually more of an ache. They will get unusual fatigue, and pain radiating to the back, jaw, shoulder or arm.
“Women tend to get symptoms six months to a year ahead of time, and they are nebulous symptoms of being tired or short of breath, indigestion or having trouble sleeping.”
Kalman and Pamela Stewart Fahs, a professor in rural nursing at Binghamton, developed a questionnaire to measure a woman‘s knowledge of heart attack symptoms and warning signs. They created a pilot version of an educational program. Using an intramural research grant from Upstate, they held small-group sessions with 141 post-menopausal women. They gave them the questionnaire, presented the program, and then gave them the questionnaire a second time.
“The overwhelming majority of them did learn the symptoms. Most of the women did remember,” Kalman says.
The next phase of the project relies on funding from grants from the Rural Nurse Organization and the Raymond Marsh Fund and will compare an education program that uses the CURB and FACTSS acronyms with a program that does not. The researchers will also study whether women retain the information two months after they learn it.
Kalman expects this work to take place this spring in the rural areas around Binghamton and in Syracuse, and to involve her colleague, assistant professor Margaret (Meega) Wells.
Eventually, the researchers want to study whether education can improve the way women respond when they experience signs of a possible heart attack. Stewart Fahs says, “having knowledge doesn‘t necessarily change your behavior. But if you don‘t have the knowledge, you‘re unlikely to change.”
Kalman says once the educational program is perfected, the researchers will explore methods of sharing the information. Three years ago when they embarked on the research, they envisioned CURB or FACTSS on refrigerator magnets. Now they like the idea of internet or mobile telephone apps.
