Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) is dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system causing orthostatic intolerance (Raj et al., 2020). There are many other associated symptoms as the autonomic nervous system affects every body system (Raj et al., 2020). Patients’ symptoms can be triggered by a wide variety of environmental factors, including scents, stress, temperature, and more (Knoop & Dunwoody, 2022; Raj et al., 2020). Patients with POTS experience significant diagnostic delays, seeing an average of 7 physicians to get an accurate diagnosis (Herrera & Behm, 2021). Misdiagnosis is common amongst patients with POTS (Knopp & Dunwoody, 2022). There are also significant comorbidities amongst these patients, which can lead to misdiagnoses (Vadas & Cheung, 2015; Yahya & Khawaja, 2020). 90% of patients with POTS are women, yet men experience significantly less of a diagnostic delay than women, demonstrating that bias has an impact on the ability for patients to get care (Herrera & Behm, 2021). More patients have being presenting to their doctors with POTS symptoms, especially as it is one manifestation of Long COVID (Davis et al., 2021). My research will be a proposed intervention committed to providing patients with a formal network of support to help them increase their toolbox of coping mechanisms. Due to the delays in getting treatment for POTS patients in Ontario, it is essential to support patient activation within this community. Support groups have been proven to be a good intervention for people living with chronic illnesses like POTS (Herrera & Behm, 2021; Knoop & Dunwoody, 2022). This intervention will have individual and group components, asynchronous and synchronous components, and will allow members to review the resources on an online platform.