Assessing Adherence to Acute Stroke Therapy Guidelines: An Audit Study

Background The 2023 National Clinical Guidelines for stroke for the UK and Ireland recommended that people with motor recovery goals post stroke should receive at least 3 hours (180 minutes) of rehabilitation per day on at least 5 out of 7 days a week. This is a significant change to previous guidelines that recommended that patients receive at least 45 minutes of each therapy for a minimum of 5 days (NICE 2013). In 2022, the UK Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme found that only 11.9% received more than 45 minutes of physiotherapy. This highlights that many services were not achieving previous recommendations. Methods In an Irish hospital, two new stroke assistant posts were funded with the aim to maximise therapy time. An audit was performed on compliance with the 2023 national guidelines on an acute stroke unit in august 2023 for patients that were identified as having motor goals post stroke. Data was collected in the form of minutes of direct patient contact time by each therapy –physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and therapy assistants. This data was compared against recommended therapy time and presented as a percentage of this. Results 9 acute stroke patients who were identified as having motor goals were randomly selected. It was found that none of these patients were meeting current therapy guidelines. When compared to the recommendations, the average amount of therapy that patients received per day ranged from 44 minutes – 132 minutes. On average, patients received 49.1% of recommended therapy. It was also found that therapy assistants were providing, on average, 59.3% of the actual therapy received. Conclusion Stroke patients are not receiving the recommended amount of therapy as per the most recent guidelines. Although the addition of stroke assistants significantly increased therapy time, guidelines were still not achieved.