Abstract P19: Stroke Self-Management: Outcomes of a Randomized Controlled Pilot

Background: Secondary stroke prevention is championed as guideline care; yet there are no systematic programs offered in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Moreover, from our preliminary work, stroke survivors are often left alone to cope with the psychosocial aftermath of recovery. We developed a stroke self-management program to address these gaps. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to pilot test a stroke self-management program on stroke specific, quality of life, depression, self-efficacy and risk factor management. Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled trial at two VA sites where we recruited patients with an acute stroke to receive either the stroke self-management program or an attention-control protocol over a 12-week period following hospital discharge. Participants received 6 sessions targeting primary outcomes of stroke self management including post stroke depression, fears of injury, secondary stroke risk factor management, and secondary outcomes of self-efficacy, and communication with providers using social learning theory as a framework. We surveyed outcomes at baseline and at 3 months. We conducted an intention to treat analysis comparing the intervention to the control group on outcomes using t-tests. Results: We recruited 62 participants (33 control and 29 intervention) who were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of ischemic stroke. The sample was 21.3% African-American and 69.8% White and all but 1 (1.6%) were men. We found trends in differences between groups on self-efficacy to exercise regularly (p Conclusion: This pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of delivering a stroke self-management program to recent stroke survivors. As a next step, we plan to test in a larger scale randomized controlled trial after incorporating lessons learned from this pilot study.