The Inpatient Rehabilitation Center has put together a comprehensive program to educate stroke patients about their health and to help them navigate the healthcare system.

The center includes Departments 4000 and 4100 at The Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital. It serves patients needing rehabilitation after stroke, brain and spinal cord injuries, trauma, orthopedic surgeries, amputation and other neurological disorders.

The new education program for stroke patients includes:

• Information about how patients can advocate for themselves, talk to physicians and manage their illness.
• A personal health profile, which patients or their caregivers are encouraged to fill out during their hospitalization. This form contains information about health history, medications and more. Patients can then take their completed form to their follow-up appointments with doctors and therapists and can show it to home-health nurses.
• More comprehensive discharge instruction forms.
• A Stroke Recovery Scorecard, which allows patients to report changes in their ability to communicate, their movement and their body function.
• A health resource notebook distributed to every stroke patient or his or her caregiver. This notebook contains information about stroke and a checklist to help patients and families organize their questions.
• Stroke education classes for patients and caregivers, which are offered twice a month.
• Continuing a monthly Guilford County Stroke Support Group, which is offered by the hospital and open to stroke survivors and their families throughout the county.

"These new materials help ensure that patients have much more education and are well prepared to leave here," says Marilyn Lane-Morgan, RN, Quality Manager, Rehabilitation. "Through this education, we’re hoping to prevent recurrence and complications of stroke and ultimately to improve quality of life for our patients."