Cochrane systematic review to identify nursing interventions for improving nutritional status of stroke patients

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is a worldwide collaboration that brings together robust research, mainly from randomised controlled trials, across healthcare specialties.

However, few of the reviews have addressed specific nursing topics and even fewer have been conducted by nurses. Dr Sharon Hamilton was involved with this collaborative review project (along with nursing colleagues from London and Portsmouth); their findings are about to be published in the Cochrane Library.

The review focused on interventions for improving the nutritional status of stroke patients. The authors wanted to identify exactly what interventions nurses were using and to identify outcomes in relation to mortality, complications and activities of daily living and quality of life.

The key finding of the review was that no studies meeting the inclusion criteria for the Cochrane database had been published in this area. There were a number of small scale, mainly qualitative, studies but these did not meet the quality criteria for inclusion.

The major implication of these findings is that nurses have very little research evidence on which to base their practice in this area. It is hoped that this will influence the international research agenda and encourage more nurses to review the evidence base for nursing practice.

The research team are working hard at disseminating their findings. The protocol and preliminary results were presented at the 9th Quadrennial Congress of the World Federation of Neuroscience Nurses in Barcelona with future conference presentations and a paper being prepared. Furthermore, the research team are all committee members of the National Stroke Nurses’ Forum and are working with the Intercollegiate Working Party for Stroke, led by the Royal College of Physicians, to update the National Stroke Guidelines in 2007 which will include nurses’ role in nutritional support.

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