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Aim: To report an exploration of the multidimensionality of safety in cardiac rehabilitation programmes as perceived by women who were enrolled in the Women's Cardiovascular Health Initiative in Toronto, Canada., Background: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women. Although cardiac rehabilitation is clinically effective, significantly fewer women than men participate in available programmes. The literature identifies factors affecting women's cardiac rehabilitation participation, and provides possible explanations for this gender disparity. Although safety is mentioned among the barriers to women's cardiac rehabilitation participation, the extent to which safety contributes to programme participation, completion, and maintenance remains under-explored in the cardiac rehabilitation literature., Design: We conducted an exploratory qualitative study to examine the role safety and place play for women engaged in cardiac prevention and rehabilitation at the Women's Cardiovascular Health Initiative. Methods.  From 2005-2006, 14 participants engaged in semi-structured, qualitative interviews lasting 30-90 minutes. Discussions addressed women's experiences at the Women's Cardiovascular Health Initiative. Interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis., Findings: Three themes were developed: 'Safety', which was sub-categorized according to physical, social, and symbolic interpretations of safety, 'searching for a sense of place', and 'confidence and empowerment'., Conclusion: Feeling physically, socially, and symbolically safe in one's cardiac rehabilitation environment may contribute to programme adherence and exercise maintenance for women. Focusing on comprehensive notions of safety in future cardiac rehabilitation research could offer insight into why many women do not maintain an exercise regimen in currently structured cardiac rehabilitation and community programmes., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

Objective: To combine insights from multiple disciplines into a set of questions that can be used to investigate contextual factors affecting health decision making., Background: Decision-making processes and outcomes may be shaped by a range of non-medical or 'contextual' factors particular to an individual including social, economic, political, geographical and institutional conditions. Research concerning contextual factors occurs across many disciplines and theoretical domains, but few conceptual tools have attempted to integrate and translate this wide-ranging research for health decision-making purposes., Methods: To formulate this tool we employed an iterative, collaborative process of scenario development and question generation. Five hypothetical health decision-making scenarios (preventative, screening, curative, supportive and palliative) were developed and used to generate a set of exploratory questions that aim to highlight potential contextual factors across a range of health decisions., Findings: We present an exploratory tool consisting of questions organized into four thematic domains - Bodies, Technologies, Place and Work (BTPW) - articulating wide-ranging contextual factors relevant to health decision making. The BTPW tool encompasses health-related scholarship and research from a range of disciplines pertinent to health decision making, and identifies concrete points of intersection between its four thematic domains. Examples of the practical application of the questions are also provided., Conclusions: These exploratory questions provide an interdisciplinary toolkit for identifying the complex contextual factors affecting decision making. The set of questions comprised by the BTPW tool may be applied wholly or partially in the context of clinical practice, policy development and health-related research., (© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)