Women's decisions to seek treatment for the symptoms of potential cardiac illness.
Cardiac disease is the number one killer of Canadian women, and therapies are often highly time dependent. Consequently, understanding the forms of knowledge that women draw upon to understand and interpret their symptoms of a potential cardiac event may be important in relation to efforts to reduce treatment-seeking delay. Data for this grounded-theory study were drawn from in-depth interviews with 16 women who went to one of two emergency departments between June 2005 and June 2006 for the treatment of symptoms indicating potential cardiac illness. The basic social process of maintaining integrity explained the women's interpretations of, and actions in relation to, their symptoms. This paper indicates the findings as they relate to specific forms of knowledge the women used to make decisions about treatment-seeking, including embodied, temporal, rational, and relational ways of knowing.


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study contribute to the body of knowledge with regard to women's decisions about seeking treatment for the symptoms of potential cardiac illness.
Turris
Sheila A
SA
Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Sheila.Turris@vch.ca