Is health care seeking behaviour affected by response to chest pain amongst South Asians and Whites?

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death in the UK. Despite this declines in death rates have been experienced within the UK since the 1970’s but these declines have not been experienced by South Asians. Studies on access have highlighted inconsistencies between South Asians and Whites. The present study was conducted to explore factors which may affect health care seeking behaviour following symptoms of angina amongst South Asians and Whites. 40 face to face interviews were conducted using a purposive sample from a quantitative survey (Chaturvedi et al, 1997). This sub-sample consisted of White and South Asian male and female participants aged between 35-55 years. A further 4 focus groups were conducted with another purposive sample of White and South Asian males and females aged between 35-55 years. This second sample was selected using the same sampling frame (Chaturvedi et al, 1997). Focus groups were only conducted with those participants who had not taken part in the individual face to face interviews. The individual face to face interviews consisted of 10 South Asian male and 10 South Asian female participants and 10 White male and 10 White female participants. The focus groups consisted of 5-6 participants each. The focus groups were homogenous for ethnicity and sex. The epistemological framework used to guide the analysis was social constructionism. Results indicated that trust was an important factor which affected health care seeking behaviour amongst South Asians and Whites. South Asians had high trust of their GP, were over reliant on the GP and had lower expectations following chest pain. White participants had low trust of their GP, were less reliant on the GP and had high expectation following symptoms of chest pain. Issues of trust affected response to symptoms of angina, with Whites stating that they were less likely to delay seeking health care during an acute crisis compared to South Asians who stated they would phone the GP for advice before going to A&E. Conclusion Access to appropriate health care following chest pain is likely to result from patient related factors which include response to chest pain, expectation from the health service following chest pain and most importantly an overly trusting GP patient relationship