Atrial Fibrillation, Sudden Cardiac Death, Syncope
Patient focus groups, narrative interviews, in-depth interviews, and surveys will solicit the patient view of the economic, employment, social, and psychological impacts of arrhythmia.
To further round out the depiction of the impact of arrhythmia on the patient’s life experience, separate focus group, interview and survey data will be collected from arrhythmia patient family members. To ensure the primacy of the patient voice within the research, patients will also be involved in the thematic analysis of the focus group, interview, and survey data to map the patient journey through the experience of arrhythmia. The ultimate purpose of patient journey mapping is to identify patient priorities for managing medical interventions, mitigating lifestyle challenges, and conducting further research.
This research is important to patients because this extensive data collection provides a robust context for medical interventions and research which might otherwise reflect only the medical practitioners’ construction of meaning and priorities. For examples, medical interventions which fail to take the realities of patient employment, family responsibilities, and lifestyle choices into consideration are less likely to achieve compliance than when these interventions can be scheduled, explained, and supported within a narrative that makes sense to the patient, family, and employer. Understanding and taking the patient perspective into consideration may lead to more efficient and effective interventions, and therefore more desirable outcomes for patients, their families, employers, and, ultimately, for the economy and society.
Mary Runte PhD
Associate Professor, Area Chair
University of Lethbridge
As an Associate Professor in the Policy and Strategy area of the Faculty of Management, Mary’s principal teaching is in the area of social responsibility in business and society. With an extensive professional background in the nonprofit sector, I bring the ‘real world’ of the voluntary sector into the classroom. My research interests also reflect my engagement in the nonprofit sector, with a focus on nonprofit and business collaboration.
Mary also researches work-family interaction, but with a slightly different twist than mainstream management research. She has also written on how the changing discourse of purpose higher education has shaped policy, management and teaching practices within the post-secondary system.
More recently Mary has become involved in health management research with a particular interest in patient and community engagement in medical research.
Underlying all these is her fascination with the interstices between the intentions of institutional and management policies and the lived experiences of individuals.