Heart attacks in women often go unrecognized 30 to 55 percent of the time and those who miss the warning signs and fail or delay getting help, run the risk of death or severe disability.
To help women recognize the symptoms and shorten the time to treatment, researchers at two SUNY institutions, Upstate Medical University and Binghamton University, have come together to develop a new educational program they believe will ultimately, save lives.
Melanie Kalman, PhD, associate professor and director of research, and Margaret Wells, PhD, assistant professor, in Upstate’s College of Nursing, and Pamela Stewart Fahs, DSN, professor and Decker Chair in Rural Nursing at Binghamton University’s Decker School of Nursing, are collaborating on a project called “Matters of Your Heart.” The goal is to develop a program to educate women about heart attack symptoms and also to teach about the early warning signs that a heart attack might be on the way.
The researchers conducted the first phase of their project under an intramural research grant from Upstate. They first created a questionnaire to measure a woman’s understanding of heart attack symptoms and warning signs. They then created a pilot version of an educational presentation.
Working with 141 post-menopausal women, Kalman and Stewart Fahs held small-group sessions to administer the questionnaire, present the program and then give the questionnaire again. They found that the educational program increased the women’s knowledge of heart disease.
The program is partially based on a program that Stewart Fahs developed several years ago to teach rural residents about symptoms of a stroke.