he promotion of optimum health and wellbeing of patients affected by stroke is important in nursing practice. Nurses and other healthcare providers often explore best practice interventions to ensure that the optimum health outcomes of stroke patients are achieved. They also utilize practice interventions such as patient-centeredness and inter-professional collaboration in patient care. Stroke has adverse effects on the health and wellbeing of the patients as well as their significant others. Therefore, this section of the project explores the impact of stroke on patients, effect of state board of nursing practice standards and organizational or government policies on stroke care, and strategies for improving the care outcomes for stroke patients.
Stroke is one of the health problems with adverse effects to the quality of life, safety, and costs to patients and healthcare systems. Stroke is considered the leading cause of long-term disability among the affected populations in the USA. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stroke affects about 795000 people annually in the USA. Of this number, 25% of them will die with 15-30% remaining disabled due to stroke. Stroke has devastating social, physical, and psychological effects to the patients, their families and healthcare systems as a whole. One of the effects is the disability that affects the patients. Patients lose their social and occupational functioning due to the effects of disability (Xu et al., 2018). There is also the fact that the quality of life of the affected patients and their significant others decline substantially. Studies have shown that stroke has a severe effect on both the short and long-term quality of life on its patients and families (Kariyawasam et al., 2020; Jafari et al., 2020). The effect can be seen from the reduction in mental health scores, health utility, physical health, and self-rate health scores in patients affected by stroke (Jafari et al., 2020). In some cases, patients experience complete paralysis, which increase their dependence on others and worsening further their quality of lives. Aspects such as level of language impairment, dependence, age, level of education, and type of stroke have been identified as the critical predictors of poor quality of life among stroke patients.
Stoke also has high economic effects to patients, their families and healthcare systems. Accordingly, estimates show that the healthcare costs incurred per stroke person including rehabilitation, inpatient care, and follow-up care in the US is USD 140048. The economic burden of the disease worsens significantly in cases of families with low socioeconomic backgrounds and lack of a medical insurance coverage (Rochmah et al., 2021). According to Fadhilah and Permanasari (2020), the average costs that stroke patients in the US incur on a monthly basis for their needed care is $4644. The cost makes the US the leading country in terms of the cost of care incurred by stroke patients followed by Denmark and Norway (Fadhilah & Permanasari, 2020). Cumulatively, the average lifetime cost per ischemic stroke survivor in the US is estimated to be $90981 (Tyagi et al., 2018). Healthcare systems also suffer from stroke. As asserted by Ramos-Lima et al., (2018), stroke places immense pressure on healthcare systems due to the high costs needed in addressing the care needs of the patients. The consequences of complications of stroke such as functional limitations and serious disabilities require intensive use of healthcare resources, affecting the efficiency of service provision to other populations (Ramos-Lima et al., 2018). Overall, the above effects of stroke predispose patients and their significant others to significant distress, hence, their health and wellbeing. The above evidence is consistent with what I have experienced as a nurse since stroke acts as a source of a considerable burden to patients, families, and healthcare systems.
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