- Published
- 01 April 2021
- Journal article
Chest pain presentations to hospital during the COVID-19 lockdown: lessons for public health media campaigns
- Authors
- Source
- PLoS ONE
Abstract
Objective
Emergency Department (ED) attendances with chest pain reduced during the COVID-19 lockdown. We performed a service evaluation project in NHS Lothian to explore how and why the COVID-19 pandemic and public health advice had affected chest pain presentations and help-seeking behaviour at an individual patient level using a qualitative interview approach.
Methods
We carried out 28 semi-structured telephone interviews with a convenience sample of patients who presented with chest pain during lockdown and in patients with known coronary heart disease under the outpatient care of a cardiologist in April and May 2020. Interviews were audio recorded and voice files listened to while making detailed notes. Salient themes and issues were documented as verbatim extracts. Interviews were analysed thematically.
Results
Patient interviews revealed three main themes. 1) pandemic help-seeking behaviour; describing how participants made the decision to seek professional healthcare assessment. 2) COVID-19 exposure concerns; describing how the subthemes of perceived vulnerability, wishing to protect others and adding pressure to the health service shaped their decision making for an episode of acute chest pain. 3) hospital experience; describing the difference between the imagined and actual experience in hospital.
Conclusions
Qualitative interviews revealed how the pandemic shaped help-seeking practices, how patients interpreted their personal vulnerability to the virus, and described patient experience of attending hospital for assessment during this time. As patient numbers presenting to hospital appeared to mirror public health messaging, dynamic monitoring of this messaging should evaluate public response to healthcare campaigns to ensure the net impact on health, pandemic and non-pandemic related, is optimised.
Rights
© 2021 Ferry et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Cite as
Ferry, A., Keanie, C., Denvir, M., Mills, N. & Strachan, F. 2021, 'Chest pain presentations to hospital during the COVID-19 lockdown: lessons for public health media campaigns', PLoS ONE, 16(4), article no: e0249389. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249389