Meeting Rehabilitation Needs for Stroke Survivors: A Critical Appraisal of Ekstam et al. (2015)

Running head: BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Bachelor nursing assignment
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Introduction:
All stroke survivors require some or full assistance in activities of daily living after
stroke. Stroke rehabilitation is needed in the early stage to achieve better recovery in the first
month after stroke and reduce disability in the long term (Veerbeek et al., 2011). The essay is
concerned with identifying ways to meet rehabilitative needs of Sue-Anne, who finds it hard to
perform her usual activities of daily living. The main research question related to the scenario is
‘How may a caregiver effectively support family member in identifying activities of daily living
for a stroke?’. The research study by Ekstam et al. (2015) is found relevant to answer the
research question and the essay mainly provides a critical appraisal of research article to discuss
how rehabilitation needs for stroke survivors like Anne can be met.
Part A:
Authorship:
The research article was developed by group of six authors. Two of the authors were
from Department of Occupational Therapy and the rest were from Department of Clinical
research, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation Medicine, Division of Physiotherapy
and Department of Clinical Neuroscience. Based on the field in which each authors are working,
it can be said that work is reliable as all of them have expertise and knowledge regarding the
rehabilitation. Occupation therapy, neuroscience and physiotherapy are all interrelated fields and
expertise in this field may help to enhance the quality of the study. The author can easily
interpret patient’s perception and link them to rehabilitation needs.
The conflict of interest or bias that has been found in this study is that author’s were
reliant on previously prepared rehabilitation questionnaire. Although the research question

2BACHELOR NURSING ASSIGNMENT
related to dyadic perception was novel, however selection of existing instead of developing
questionnaire related to study objective would have enhanced the quality of the study.
Research question:
The main research question for the study by Ekstam et al. (2015) was to investigate about
the association between the perception of stroke survivors and their caregivers regarding
rehabilitation needs 1 year after stroke. The main rational for conducting research in this area is
understood from the background information given in the article. The study gave the background
information that patient-centered rehabilitation is necessary for stroke patient, however 33-49%
of patient perceive unmet rehabilitation needs after 1 year (Dworzynski, Ritchie & Playford,
2015). Ullberg et al. (2016) also supports the fact that unmet rehabilitation needs 12 months after
stroke has not covered in studies. The author clarified that sense of coherence is needed to adjust
personal resources and fulfill unmet needs. The author pointed out to the gap in research that
association between sense of coherence and perceived needs for rehabilitation has not been
covered in detail in past research.
The author argued that family caregivers play an important role in rehabilitation as they
can easily identify unmet rehabilitation needs in their family member. However, the issue that
has been found for stroke survivor is that most of the informal caregivers are elderly and they
need support to cope with care giving burden. Hence, exploring the perspective of both patients
as well family caregiver regarding unmet rehabilitation need was important as dyadic perception
has not been explored before. By conducting research on dyad’s perception related to
rehabilitation, Ekstam et al. (2015) aims to obtain information related to everyday personal life
experience of stroke survivors and their caregivers and the strategies they adapt to manage stroke