Medical professional support and cardiac rehabilitation of males and females

In order to operationalize the concept of 'social support', myocardial infarction (MI) survivors were asked to describe others who had been 'specially helpful' to them during their recovery, using an adjective checklist. Doctors were more likely to be described with words denoting expertise than were friends and family. However, about a third of the adjectives used to describe doctors referred to emotional support. Subjects who had not mentioned a doctor amongst their 'specially helpful' others during the recovery period differed from those who had, in sex distribution, ideas about the cause of the MI, and rehospitalization experiences. Results have implications for the form of medical professional support valued by MI survivors, and also for alternative coping strategies used with apparently equal success by a proportion of survivors.