Guidance
This guideline covers stroke rehabilitation for adults and young people aged 16 and over who have had a stroke with continuing impairment, activity limitation or participation restriction. It aims to improve rehabilitation for people who have had a stroke by specifying how stroke units and multidisciplinary stroke teams should be organised. It makes detailed recommendations on assessments and interventions for the functional difficulties caused by stroke.
NICE has also produced a guideline on the diagnosis and initial management of stroke.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- organising health and social care for people who need stroke rehabilitation
- planning and delivering stroke rehabilitation
- providing support and information
- self-care and long-term health and social care support
- assessments and interventions to help with cognitive and emotional functioning, vision, swallowing, communication and movement
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Social care practitioners
- Commissioners and providers
- Adults and young people who have had a stroke and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We checked this guideline in March 2019 and we plan to update it. See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called stroke rehabilitation: long-term rehabilitation after stroke.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.