Johnson J A, King K B
College of Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago 60612.
Am J Crit Care. 1995 Jan;4(1):29-35.
Patients having cardiac symptoms often delay for hours before seeking treatment. Educational programs have had little impact on reducing this delay time.
To identify symptoms expected by a patient during a myocardial infarction and to examine whether a discrepancy between expectations and experience influenced delay in seeking treatment.
A retrospective, descriptive design was used. The setting was a large northeastern medical center. The convenience sample included 65 patients (mean age, 57; 74% men) after their first myocardial infarction. Data were collected with the Symptom Representation Questionnaire, a semi-structured interview guide that identified subjects' expectations about heart disease, actual symptom experience, and strategies used to manage the experience.
The majority of subjects reported that they had expectations about the symptoms of heart disease that focused on location, intensity, associated symptoms, and quality. Expectations did not match the symptom experience of 74% of subjects. Subjects whose expectations did not match their experience delayed significantly longer before seeking treatment than subjects whose expectations did match their experience.
Our results indicated that patients have expectations about symptoms of heart disease that may influence their behavior during a myocardial infarction.
有心脏症状的患者在寻求治疗前往往会拖延数小时。教育项目在减少这种拖延时间方面收效甚微。
确定患者在心肌梗死期间预期出现的症状，并检查期望与实际经历之间的差异是否会影响寻求治疗的延迟。
采用回顾性描述性设计。研究地点为东北部一家大型医疗中心。便利样本包括65例首次发生心肌梗死后的患者（平均年龄57岁；74%为男性）。使用症状表现问卷收集数据，这是一份半结构化访谈指南，用于确定受试者对心脏病的期望、实际症状经历以及应对这些经历所采用的策略。
大多数受试者表示，他们对心脏病症状的期望集中在症状位置、强度、相关症状和性质上。74%的受试者的期望与症状经历不相符。期望与经历不相符的受试者在寻求治疗前拖延的时间明显长于期望与经历相符的受试者。
我们的结果表明，患者对心脏病症状有期望，这可能会影响他们在心肌梗死期间的行为。
