Evaluation of the Impact of an Individual Peer Support Intervention for Stroke Patients When Returning Home: a Mixed Methods Pilot Study

Evaluation of the Impact of an Individual Peer Support Intervention for Stroke Patients When Returning Home: a Mixed Methods Pilot Study

Going back home following a stroke is a key step for the patient and his or her relatives. Due to the brutality of stroke and increasingly shorter in-hospital lengths of stay, patients and their families must adapt quickly to the patient's new health functioning and the new caregiving and support role for family members.

Peer support could be an innovative and inexpensive approach to addressing these issues. Peer-helpers are patient-partners who put their experiential knowledge from life with the disease at the disposal of other patients to offer them social and emotional support in the management of the disease in connection with care, social and community structures. Group peer support programs face organizational challenges and fail to address the full range of patient needs for stroke home visits. Individualized and more flexible support could better meet the needs of patients. Our hypothesis is that individual peer support improves quality of life and patient empowerment during the discharge period compared to usual practice.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Adult patient,
• Having had a first confirmed, ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke
• Managed in the participating rehabilitation center
• Whose discharge to home directly from the rehabilitation center is planned
• Presenting a modified Rankin score of 1 to 3 when deciding to leave the stroke center
• Having given its written consent
• Whose main residence is located in the Rhône department
• Aphasic patients may be included if a caregiver can follow up with the case manager

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patient living in an institution prior to stroke
• included in a gerontological network before stroke
• Patient unable to understand quality of life questionnaires
• Patient with unstable medical or psychological conditions who, in the opinion of the investigator, could lead the subject to be non-compliant or uncooperative during the study or could compromise patient safety or participation in the study
• Patient under guardianship or curatorship
• Patient not affiliated to a social health insurance