Do clinical rehabilitation education programs really improve stroke-related knowledge?

Objective: We evaluated the effectiveness of a clinical stroke education program for improving stroke-related health knowledge after inpatient rehabilitation in a "real world" setting. Design: Thirty-four patients participated in an inpatient rehabilitation clinical stroke education program. Their stroke-related health knowledge in three key domains-risk factors, warning signs, and appropriate actions to take if a stroke is suspected-was evaluated at admission and 1 2 wks later using a single-group, pretest-posttest design. Pretest and posttest comparisons were conducted using the Marginal Homogeneity test and the McNemar test. Results: Small, nonsignificant improvements in stroke-related health knowledge were detected at posttest. Twelve weeks after the education program, 29% of participants were unable to name a single risk factor, 32% were unable to name a single warning sign, and 29% were unable to name appropriate emergency action in the event they suspected a stroke. Conclusions: A substantial proportion of patients who completed our clinical stroke education program continued to have poor stroke-related health knowledge. We noted several limitations in our program that may have contributed to this outcome. Changes may be useful for improving the success of clinical stroke education programs, thereby reducing knowledge deficits.