Women dismissing heart attacks, hesitating on ambulance calls

When Debra Clare had a sudden heart attack, her first thought was not to call an ambulance; she is not alone in that.

Women are more likely to wait longer before going to hospital during a medical episode, a new study has found

Women are more likely than men to delay calling 000 when having a heart attack, increasing their risk of lasting harm.

A study by Monash University has also found that women are more likely to wait longer before going to hospital in an emergency.

The Monash study, published to the Emergency Medicine Journal, enlisted 34,000 Australian men and women to test their willingness to call for an ambulance after experiencing cardiac symptoms.

When asked to rank their comfort level in calling an ambulance, 69.1 per cent of women surveyed said they would be confident to do so, compared with 76.7 per cent of men.

“For most people, calling an ambulance is such a rare event and that’s why you can see that in some of the answers that they want to be 100 per cent sure, and women will often go off and seek approval from all sorts of other people before they call,” said paramedic and Monash associate professor Kathryn Eastwood.

“As far as I’m concerned, if you think you’re having heart attack, call an ambulance.”

Regardless of gender, emergency call rates are lower among those who do not speak English as a first language, do not have health insurance, or live in the Northern Territory, the study’s results show.

Concerningly, those with existing cardiovascular risk factors are also less likely to call for help.

“They just get a little bit desensitised to it,” Associate Professor Eastwood said.

“They just have become a bit more blase about it because they have some cardiovascular history already.

“Some women perceive heart attacks as a male thing.”

When Debra Clare of Tamworth, NSW, suffered chest pains, she did not call an ambulance, but instead asked her husband to drive her to hospital.

Ms Clare, 48, did not know it, but she was having a heart attack and it would not be her last.

“I didn’t think I was having a heart attack and I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I was walking back in from the washing machine and this pain just hit me in the chest, and it was so bad. The sweat was rolling off me and I was vomiting.

“When I went to the hospital they did an ECG and some bloods, and that all came back clear.”

Tamworth resident Debra Clare had her husband drive her to hospital rather than call an ambulance when was having a heart attack. Picture: Supplied

None of the doctors on Ms Clare’s first visit correctly diagnosed her heart attack. It was not until a year later when her younger brother had a heart attack that she sought out testing and found her right coronary artery was blocked.

She had a second heart attack soon after, for which she called an ambulance.

“It’s so wrong because it’s mainly women who suffer like this. So many people told me when I got into hospital that if I was a man and I presented with those symptoms they would’ve done something about it straight away,” she said.

“I lost a lot of trust.

“You don’t want to call the ambulance because what if it’s not serious? What if it is stress? What if it is anxiety?

“I don’t want to take the ambulance away from someone who needs it.”