Topic: The influence of gender on women's risk beliefs for heart attack.
Purpose: To inform healthcare providers how women's beliefs and attitudes contribute to treatment-seeking delay in the event of a heart attack, and to establish the importance of risk beliefs in women.
Sources: Published literature in MEDLINE and CINAHL computerized databases, reference lists of obtained articles.
Conclusions: Women's perceived risk beliefs for heart attack are influenced by the effects of media, cultural, and gender roles and the modeling of bias in health care. There is a need for healthcare providers to change their focus from acting on (etic) a patient to interacting within (emic) the belief systems of their patients to optimize positive outcomes.