Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Introduction. Chest pain is the most common symptom of ACS. The term chest pain is an umbrella term, and patients often describe chest symptoms using other terms leading them to deny chest pain. A mismatch between healthcare professionals’ and the lay public’s conceptions of chest pain may lead to ineffective assessment or triage for chest symptoms leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment.
Research question. How does the conception of chest pain differ between healthcare professionals and the lay public?
Methods. Participants from across the U.S. were recruited online for the lay public sample. Healthcare professionals were recruited from a large multi-facility healthcare system in the Midwest. Participants completed an online survey that included basic demographic questions and the Chest Pain Conception Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize chest pain in both samples while Chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare the samples.
Results. In the lay public sample, participants (N=597) were primarily female (59.6%) and non-Hispanic White (57.8%) with an average age of 54.0 years (SD 11.5). A total of 220 healthcare professionals participated. Healthcare providers were primarily female (92.3%) and the majority were 25-44 years of age. Healthcare professionals were more likely to select a wider variety of chest pain descriptors than the lay public with over 50% of healthcare professionals choosing 9 possible descriptors while over 50% of the lay public endorsed only 6 (Table 1). They were also more likely to select a wider variety of locations than the lay public (Table 2). Healthcare professionals were more likely than the lay public to report that ACS-related chest pain occurs ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ with rest (p<.001) and activity (p<.001). The lay public was more likely to believe that chest pain would be intense (47.4%) or very intense (37.9%) and bother them ‘a lot’ (41.4%) or ‘a great deal’ (44.1%) though most healthcare professionals did endorse that chest pain would be intense (50.5%) with fewer selecting very intense (25.0%).
Conclusion. Significant differences were identified in the chest pain conceptions between healthcare professionals and the lay public. These findings highlight the need for education that targets misconceptions so that health care professionals and the lay public conceive of term chest pain in similar ways, supporting more accurate assessment/triage, diagnosis, and rapid management.