ICU staff as well as other professionals should prepare patients and relatives for the fact that they may need various types of help for many months after discharge from the ICU, and an overview of national and local opportunities for help should be offered.
An interdisciplinary rehabilitation program actively needs to include the patient by integrating the patient's perspective in the goals as well as in daily rehabilitation. In the team, nurses had the role of coordinator and the patient's voice.
Nurses experience their roles and functions addressing relatives after stroke as crucial, challenging and multifaceted. They acknowledged care needs of the relatives in their own right by addressing the relatives' vulnerability during in-hospital rehabilitation characterised by an existential threat to the physical as well as the shared life. The focus on the needs of relatives considering their expected future role was experienced as conflicting with restricting time frames and a healthcare system focusing on the individual patient.
Stroke is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. In the United States, it was estimated that approximately 750,000 patients had a stroke annually. Denmark, with a population of 5.5 million, had about 12,500 cases of hospitalizations from stroke in 2009. Despite the patient's obvious need for complex nursing care and a common recognition of the nurse's central role in rehabilitation after a stroke, a description of their specific contributions appeared sparse. Therefore, a literature review was conducted using the matrix method. The purpose was to explore the nursing roles and functions identified in empirical research and to discern any possible evolution in the nursing roles and functions during a span of years. The rehabilitation literature related to inpatient rehabilitation after stroke during the period from 1997 to 2010 was reviewed. The total number of identified citations was 1,529. After screening for relevancy, 134 eligible articles remained. Of these, 30 articles were extracted into a table and formed the basis for the conclusion. We found that four nursing roles and functions described in 1997 still accommodated central aspects of the current nursing practice but also emerging changes reflecting a development in the nurses' responsibilities and contributions in conducting rehabilitation after a stroke. These changes seemed mainly to be shaped instigated by changes in the (1) patient role, (2) increasing interdisciplinary teamwork, and (3) focus on rehabilitation efforts conducted in the patient's environment.
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