Nursing interventions needed for improving quality of life of stroke patients

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death globally and it is also among the leading causes of permanent disabilities and painful long processes of recovery for survivors. As practitioners working closely with patients, nurses play a very important role in stroke management. The purpose of this thesis was to describe nursing interventions needed in improving quality of life of stroke patients using literature review. The research question was: What kinds of nursing interventions are needed to improve quality of life in stroke patients? A literature review method was used in this thesis. The process involved conducting a literature search, selecting data relevant to the research question and then analyzing that data according to thematic content in order to help in answering the research question. The data was collected from Laurea academic electronic databases namely; Proquest central, Cinahl(EBSCO), Sage and Science direct using key search words related to the purpose statement and the research question. Inclusion and exclusion criteria was used to evaluate the relevance of the articles that had been identified as literature materials. Critical Appraisal tool(CASP) was used to assess the quality of the articles identified for review. A total of 8 articles were selected as data materials for the thesis, and critically analysed through inductive content analysis process. This process produced four main categories that were used as findings. The findings described four main themes of nursing interventions needed to improve quality of life of stroke patients namely : Assessment for risk factors of stroke, determination of early signs and complications, patient centred care and patient's’ plan of care. The findings provide insights on improving the quality of life of stroke patients. Due diligence was paid on ethical considerations to ensure credibility of writing the thesis as well as acknowledging its limitations.The findings of this thesis can be used by nurses while considering interventions for caring of patients with stroke. It was recommended that further research on nursing interventions for stroke patients be carried out using a different research design.This would help to verify the results of these findings in a different setting and eventually be useful in nursing care and improvement on how to care for stroke patients