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Accustomed to enduring: experiences of African-American women seeking care for cardiac symptoms.

Banks AD, Malone RE

Department of Physiological Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, USA.

OBJECTIVE: Understand the meaning of delayed treatment seeking in African-American women with unstable angina and myocardial infarction. METHODS: Phenomenologic analysis of in-depth interview data and field notes on 12 African-American women hospitalized with unstable angina or myocardial infarction. RESULTS: Women's interpretation of and response to symptoms were informed by experiences of marginalization and their self-understanding as people who were strong and who had endured life's hardships. When hospitalized, some women experienced trivialization of their complaints by clinicians and a focus on technological procedures over respectfully attending to their concerns, which provided further disincentives to seeking care. Three major themes emerged: misrecognition and discounting of symptoms, enduring, and influence of faith. CONCLUSIONS: Experiences of marginalization shape responses to symptoms, care-seeking behavior, and interpretation of subsequent care experiences for African-American women with cardiac disease, who may experience different symptoms as well as interpret them differently than members of other groups.

Published 13 January 2005 in Heart Lung, 34(1): 13-21.
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