Care Improvement for Patients with Stroke Through Community Participation

This action research aims at analyzing the situations and developing care for stroke patients by community participation. The concept of expanded chronic care model (ECCM) was used in the study. The study areas were 13 villages located in Banped Sub-district, Muang District, Khon Kaen Province. The informants were 91 persons in total. The research instruments for data collection were 1) the in-depth interviews, 2) Barthel Index (BI) and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) of the patients, 3) the questions from the group discussion and 4) the guidelines of home visits.  Frequency and percentage were used to analyze the quantitative data and content analysis was used for analyzing the qualitative data. The results: In the situation of care of stroke patients in the community revealed that the patients were received less rehabilitation. The caregivers and the village health volunteers were not knowledge and confident in taking care of the patients. The municipalities and the community leaders did not know about the stroke situations.  The health care service organizations did not have guidelines for home and the patient database was not up-to date.  In the development of care for stroke patients by using community participation, encouraging competencies of health care and continuing care. According to patients receive continuing care and the problems and the needs of the patients to multidimensional of health and social welfare, the evaluation, it was found that the patients can perform daily activities better and had no complications.  The caregivers, the village health volunteers and the community leaders also had more satisfied.  Suggestion: The health care organization and the community organization should built the perceive problems situation and needs of stroke patients by coordinating community data learning, planning and managing of stroke patients care in community.