It is known that women who have heart attacks have a worse outcome than men – and a new study has found that one of the reasons might be that women are less comfortable calling 000 and more likely to hesitate when they have symptoms of a heart attack.
Calling emergency services is known to lead to better and more rapid diagnosis and treatment of heart attack which in turn reduces the time spent in hospital recovering. Paramedics can diagnose heart attacks and initiate treatment to resolve the heart attack and manage the symptoms prior to hospital which reduces the risk of fatal cardiac arrest.
Monash University researchers have conducted the study which compared more than 34,000 Australian women and men and their intention to call 000 and their actual use of emergency services when they suspect they are having a heart attack.
The study, conducted by Honours student Annie Shi, and led by Associate Professor Kathryn Eastwood (a Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) Paramedic in Victoria for 25 years) and Professor Janet Bray and published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, looked at data from over 34,328 participants in two national surveys.
They found that while women were more likely to call 000 if experiencing heart attack symptoms (70.4% versus 62.7% ), women were significantly less comfortable to
