Browsing by Author "Diakow, Rachel"

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    The Experience of Living with a CardioMEMSTM
    (2022-01-13) Diakow, Rachel; Reay, Gudrun; Raffin Bouchal, Donna Shelley; King-Shier, Kathryn
    Background: Heart failure is a serious health concern and places significant demands on the Canadian health care system. One method of follow-up monitoring is the CardioMEMSTM implant, which measures a patient’s pulmonary artery pressures. Healthcare professionals can use information from the device to make recommendations for the management of heart failure. Research published on CardioMEMSTM focuses predominantly on decreasing admission rates, emergency visits, and length of stay in hospital. Living with the CardioMEMSTM implant requires patients to be directly involved in data transmission, communicating with healthcare professionals, and titrating medications from their home. There is a paucity of information on the patient experience of living with a CardioMEMSTM device. Research Question: What is it like to live with a CardioMEMSTM device? Method: This was an interpretive description study. Six semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with people living with the CardioMEMSTM implant in the Calgary area. Data were analyzed using interpretive description methodology to find both patterns and variances within the data. Findings: The central found was support which was substantiated by the themes of autonomy, improved health, and convenience. Variations to the central theme were a sense of decreased control, anticipatory loss, anxiety and guilt, and inconvenience associated with using the device. Discussion: Findings can be used by healthcare professionals and candidates for the device to further understand the patient experience of living with a CardioMEMSTM device.