ABSTRACT

Awareness of the community and healthcare professionals is crucial in the management of stroke. In this study, we aimed to investigate stroke awareness of patient relatives and healthcare professionals (excluding medical doctors) and how much they can show proper behavior towards patients during acute stroke.

Healthcare professionals working in our hospital, relatives of patients who were hospitalized or were attending our outpatient clinics for follow-up due to stroke between August 2018 and November 2018 and community-dwelling healthy subjects (control group) who have not met any stroke patients were included in the study. Sociodemographic characteristics of the participants were recorded and a questionnaire investigating stroke findings, emergency approaches and risk factors prepared by the researchers was administered to the participants.

A total of 669 people, 236 healthcare professionals, 268 patient relatives and 165- controls, participated in this study. It was revealed that the patient relatives and the controls obtained information regarding stroke mostly on the internet (p=0.001). The relatives of patients received information from healthcare professionals at the third frequency. Healthcare professionals were found to be aware of the fact that stroke was treatable (p≤0.005) whereas the patient relatives and controls did not have adequate information 77% of the health professionals, 46% of the patient relatives and 34% of the controls stated that calling medical emergency service was the first choice approach. Seventy-three point seven percent of the health professionals, 38% of the relatives and 24% of the controls chose the correct answer which is “stroke patient should be transferred to emergency department within the first 4.5 hours following a stroke attack”.

In terms of stroke awareness, three groups had a high level of awareness about stroke. It was observed that the three groups did not have sufficient information of early treatment of stroke.