Grant: Operating Grant

Heart disease is the most common cause of death in Canada. Forty thousand Canadians experience cardiac arrest each year. Thirty-three per cent of these are women. Women have a greater chance of surviving cardiac arrest long enough to reach the hospital. However, they have less chance than men do of surviving the event. Research suggests that a reason for this may be that women receive different treatment for cardiac arrest in the hospital. Gender may often influence the way people are cared for after a cardiac arrest. This may contribute to unfavourable outcomes in women and affect how guidelines are applied, gaps in knowledge, and the attitudes and behaviours of caregivers. This study will identify potential barriers to post arrest care that patients experience. We will also develop a pilot knowledge translation (KT) intervention to address these. The objective of the KT intervention is to help doctors and nurses to provide best medical care to patients suffering cardiac arrest, especially women. The KT intervention will be take place in six hospitals. Three hospitals are connected to universities and have specialized heart centres. The other three are community hospitals with no specialized heart centres. The KT intervention will use knowledge sharing activities and techniques, such as research networks, social networking tools and other communication and education activities. We will evaluate the KT tools that we use in the project. We will also develop a KT strategy that fits with our network of experts and local champions. This will help us to improve the tools and also improve access to care for Canadian women who suffer cardiac arrests.We believe that our qualitative study will make clearer why gender bias is a problem in knowledge transfer in post arrest care. The pilot KT intervention will help us address this inequality. It will generate new, gender sensitive knowledge, improve knowledge in post arrest care and the care of all cardiac arrest patients.