Racing the Clock, Saving the Heart focuses on progress in minimizing the time between a heart patient making contact with the medical team and undergoing heart-muscle-saving interventions. It's a fascinating account of the science, politics and practical issues of progress in treating patients with heart disease.
Of course, the time between the onset of symptoms and making contact matters, too.
Healthy Survivors know the signs and symptoms of a heart attack. See A Possibly Life-Saving Guide to Heart Attacks. But knowledge alone is not enough.
Healthy Survivors act on their knowledge.
Here's the problem: people can take a written test on heart attacks and get the answers correct. Yet if those same people should develop those signs or symptoms in real life, they may not act on their knowledge. Why? Maybe they...
- are scared; don''t want to go to the hospital
- think it couldn't really happen to them
- don't want to change their plans
- don't want to frighten loved ones
- don't want sound the alarm for what turns out to be gas or stress
- want to wait and see if it goes away on its own
Healthy Survivors may save their life by overcoming the emotional obstacles to acting on their knowledge in health-promoting ways.
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