Background: Effective identification, assessment and support for psychosocial issues can have many positive outcomes for stroke survivors and their family, influencing quality of life, functional outcomes, health utilisation, and even mortality. The NZ National Stroke Network Psychosocial Working Group was established to support greater effectiveness and consistency of psychosocial care pathways in NZ stroke services.
Aims: Develop a national psychosocial 'toolkit' to support stroke services develop their psychosocial care pathways and provide educational resources to stroke clinicians.
Methods: An online psychosocial toolkit was developed following the working group completing a national survey with 28 services (health boards, NGOs and primary care), semi-structured interviews with service leaders and subject matter experts, and a review of international guidelines.
Results: The survey and interview results indicated significant variability in psychosocial screening and intervention across services, limited resources and training for staff relating to identifying, triaging and supporting psychosocial wellbeing, and most services did not have documented pathways for psychosocial care. The online psychosocial toolkit includes guidance on developing psychosocial pathways, education on informal and formal screening, simple action plans for communication and immediate support for clients and family/carers, and considerations for enhancing cultural responsiveness and wellbeing environments.
Conclusion: This project is consistent with an international drive to improve psychosocial care practices and processes for people post-stroke and to provide more culturally appropriate screening and treatment. Based on these findings, an online resource was developed to provide guidance for psychosocial care post-stroke and to share examples and resources to provide a more effective, consistent and equitable approach to psychosocial care across NZ.