Community nursing and stroke: a reassessment of the issues

Recent research has highlighted the difficulties that stroke patients and carers experience in navigating a recovery path through a complex array of service providers. Many of these difficulties relate to continuing recovery from stroke at home, often when professional help is decreasing. A study by Gibbon (1994) demonstrated a potential role for community nurses in helping patients and carers to cope with the aftermath of stroke. This article reassesses the issues that affect the capacity of community nurses to develop this role. A focus group conducted with community nursing students identified a number of barriers to the expansion of service provision for this patient group, including workload pressures, training and management support. Understanding of the problems faced by stroke patients and their carers in the current organization of continuing care and rehabilitation is required to support expansion of nursing practice in this area.