Nursing's Role in Successful Stroke Care Transitions Across the Continuum: From Acute Care Into the Community.

Facilitating successful care transitions across settings is a key nursing competency. Although we have achieved improvements in acute stroke care, similar advances in stroke care transitions in the postacute and return to community phases have lagged far behind. In the current delivery system, care transitions are often ineffective and inefficient resulting in unmet needs and high rates of unnecessary complications and avoidable hospital readmissions.

Measurement of Patients' Perceptions of the Quality of Acute Stroke Services: Development and Validation of the STROKE Perception Report.

Introduction: Patients' perceptions of healthcare quality have become an important part of quality measurement. We explored patients' and family's lived experiences during acute stroke hospitalization to develop a quantitative instrument.

Methods: Focus groups were conducted using open-ended scripted questions.

Therapeutic hypothermia in acute stroke.

Treatment of acute stroke is difficult due to the complexity of events triggered by ischemic insult. Current reperfusion strategies are time limited and, alone, may not be sufficient to achieve maximal neurologic outcomes. Therapeutic hypothermia (TH) appears to be a promising neuroprotective therapy, as it affects a wide range of destructive mechanisms occurring in ischemic brain tissue.