American Heart Association

Background: Facilitating successful care transitions across settings is a key nursing competency. Although we have achieved improvements in acute stroke care, similar advances in stroke care transitions in the postacute and return to community phases have lagged far behind. In the current delivery system, care transitions are often ineffective and inefficient resulting in unmet needs and high rates of unnecessary complications and avoidable hospital readmissions.

Background: Caregivers provide critical support for patients with chronic diseases, including heart disease, but often experience caregiver stress that negatively impacts their health, quality of life, and patient outcomes. Objectives: We aimed to inform health care teams on an evidence-based approach to supporting the caregivers of patients with heart disease.

Background and Purpose- Persistent depression after ischemic stroke is common in stroke survivors and may be even higher in family caregivers, but few studies have examined depressive symptom levels and their predictors in patient and caregiver groups simultaneously. Methods- Stroke survivors and their family caregivers (205 dyads) were enrolled from the national REGARDS study (Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke) into the CARES study (Caring for Adults Recovering from the Effects of Stroke) ≈9 months after a first-time ischemic stroke.