Table 2.
Domains and Themes | Representative quotes |
---|---|
Heart Failure Beliefs and Attitudes • Avoidance and denial of illness • Hopelessness and despair • Religious/spiritual faith • Trust in physician’s care (high degree of trust among Samoans, low degree of trust among Hawaiians) |
Patient: • “I don’t wanna go to the hospital...I don’t want to hear [the diagnosis].” • “[Heart failure] can hit you any time, and lot of us feel good and everything, we’re in denial, like, I don’t have that, I don’t have that [heart failure].” • “I wish there was a way so that you can take that burden cause it’s constant...it’s constant depression about not being whole again.” • “[God’s] love will come through the doctors and the nurses....it’s God’s will, we accept what happens to us.” • “A doctor is usually the one that [Samoans] would all look up to.” • “I no really care for the doctor because...they hiding something from you....They don’t come out with everything.” (Hawaiian participant) Caregiver: • “He was waiting and biding his time...[the illness] pretty much leaves him homebound”. |
Heart Failure Practices • Preference for physician’s care (Samoans only) vs. traditional cultural healing practices (Hawaiians only) • Prayers/faith in God • Diet and exercise changes • Stress management • Subsistence lifestyle |
Patient: • “Yeah, if it’s something to do with the heart, they don’t fool around [they see the doctor].” (Samoan participant) • “My girlfriend says, don’t take any pills, when the doctor says, oh, this is a new pill, try ‘em...they’re using you as a guinea pig. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but I don’t take any pills that my doctor gives to me. I don’t go to that doctor.” • “I’m learning to eat vegetables. I’m learning to cut all the fat,...” • “...we all know cut down on the salt, you know, exercise...” • “Relieving stress and everything does help by calming down and doing some breathing techniques.” • “[Before] we’d catch the fish, we’d eat it and if there’s too much we give to the neighbors, everything was fresh. But not anymore....take [Samoans] back to what they used to eat before....” Caregiver: • “Lā‘au lapa‘au [Hawaiian medicinal herbs] is awesome...cause there’s no side effects, whatever’s [sic] wrong, it takes care of the body...” • “There are times when you know, the doctors say, there isn’t anything more that the doctors can do and so they pray [sic] and give it up to God’s hands.” • “I think that maybe coming from the homestead side,...put the Hawaiians [sic] back on the land, and to grow their own food, so, subsistence...maybe we can start small by maybe having a class on growing Hawaiian food right in your back yard, and actually using that and putting it into your diet.” |
Note. The key themes presented here are summarized or aggregated concepts and phrases of participants’ actual responses and the representative quotes are listed by type of participant - heart failure patient and caregiver.