Nurse’s roles in early rehabilitation of stroke patients in hospital settings: A literature review

Abstract

Stroke is a major health problem that affects a large part of the community with high incidence and mortality rates, and causes disability, functional issues in patients suffering from it. Post-stroke disability impairs and causes difficulties in everyday life and chores and the quality of life of patients, affects the life of patients’ relatives, and leads to both socioeconomic and social problems in the long run. The target in stroke rehabilitation is to enable the highest functional in-dependence level possible for the individual and give tools to cope with usually a lifelong disability in some cases and to improve the quality of life despite the current limitations a patient is facing after this health incident. The purpose of the thesis is to find out how early nursing interventions and early rehabilitation methods can impact the patient’s recovery process. A design for this nursing thesis is a literature review. The analyzed five articles were selected based on how well they fitted the topic and the databases for finding these articles were CINAHL Ultimate, Medline and PubMed. The content analysis was conducted to analyze original information fitting for the theme of the thesis. The results suggest that early interventions and rehabilitation has a positive impact on patients functional and recovery process. Exercise which involves the individual with right treatment of stroke rehabilitation have found to have positive outcomes in the long run.