The Challenges of Nursing Stroke Management in Rehabilitation Centres

This volume provides integral knowledge of all aspects of stroke care and rehabilitation after stroke, and is therefore highly relevant for nurses who work in rehabilitation centers. It  outlines the several phases after stroke, for example the type of care patients may receive in the chronically phase at home. Nurses will obtain knowledge about treatment, importance of observation and caring with a special focus on communication problems, swallowing problems, activities of daily living, urinary and defecation problems, shoulder and hand issues. 
Thanks to photographs, nurses will learn to transfer patients in the adequate positions. Several chapters provide nurses with examples of effective and efficient collaboration with multidisciplinary professionals, informal caregivers and patients themselves. There is also an emphasis on behavior and cognitive functioning. And lastly, in the final chapters authors highlight the organization of rehabilitation and integrated care issues. 
Nurses play a very important role in rehabilitation, education, counseling, prevention, and caring for patients with cerebrovascular accident (CVA). In caring for stroke patients, nurses need specific competences and abilities that go beyond the general neurologic knowledge and experience. Nurses need to collaborate in an efficient and effective manner with multidisciplinary team members in their organization and  across organizations. This book discusses medical aspects and specific symptoms of a stroke, as well as the limitations that patients experience, and which interventions are indicated for recovery. 

Bianca Buijck completed her doctorate in 2013. She investigated the multi-dimensional challenges of geriatric rehabilitation after amputation or stroke with the specific focus on rehabilitation outcomes concerning quality of life and neuropsychiatric symptoms (GRAMPS study). She works as Coordinator and Managing Director of the largest stroke service in the Netherlands, a collaboration of 19 health care organizations. She works on stroke care issues, education (development) and research, in close collaboration with various national and international professionals (nurses, CEOs, neurologists, researchers, elderly care physicians, physical therapists etc.).  As the Managing Director, Bianca is responsible for research and project plans. She has a strong influence (evidence based) on stroke care, by bringing people together discussing the best stroke care possible. Meanwhile, she is a lecturer (and author) at several universities and universities of applied science, and serves as a reviewer of several peer reviewed journals.

She presents her research results as much as possible, convinced of the importance of disseminating these results. Furthermore, as a researcher she is influencing health care policy and health care insurers on national level, as member of several boards in health care organizations, and she is involved in developing evidence based guidelines and care pathways.  

In the last five years Bianca published more than 20 articles in national and international peer reviewed and professional journals, and published numerous books and book chapters. She presented her work at more than 70 national and international conferences, and presented more than 15 posters at Dutch and international conferences.

Ever since 1995, GM Ribbers has supervised an inpatient department for patients suffering from severe acquired brain injuries at Rijndam rehabilitation in Rotterdam. In  2012 he was appointed professor Neurorehabilitation at the department of Rehabilitation Medicine of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam. He currently leads the Rotterdam Neurorehabilitation Research (RoNeRes) group that focuses on effective and efficient treatment strategies for patients with acquired brain injury. The orientation of RoNeRes is clinical rather than fundamental and cross borders the disciplinary bounders of medical, psychological and linguistic disciplines and of human movement sciences.