Abstract
The unmet needs perceived by community-dwelling stroke survivors may truly reflect the needs of patients, which is crucial for pleasant emotional experiences and a better quality of life for community-dwelling survivors not living in institutionalized organizations. The purpose of the study is to identify the scope of unmet needs from the perspectives of stroke patients in the community. A qualitative meta-synthesis was performed according to the Joanna Briggs Institute method. Six electronic databases were searched from inception to February 2020. A total of 24 articles were involved, providing data on 378 stroke survivors. Eight categories were derived from 63 findings, and then summarized into four synthesized findings based on the framework of ICF: (1) unmet needs regarding with the disease-related information; (2) unmet physical recovery and activity/participation needs; (3) unmet needs for social environmental resources; (4) unmet psycho-emotional support needs. We found the framework of ICF mostly complete, but unmet information needs still remain. The needs that are mainly unsatisfied include physical, psychosocial and informational, as well as the practical support from professional or environment resources. The ever-present unmet needs perceived by community-dwelling stroke survivors who do not live in institutions are discoverable and mitigable. Future studies should focus on quantifying unmet needs comprehensively derived from experiential domains, assessing the rationality of the unmet needs expressed by patients’ perspectives and developing flexible strategies for long-term and changing needs.
Highlights
As the second leading cause of death worldwide, stroke is the leading cause of disability, and it has produced numerous disasters worldwide [1,2]
The present review presented an emerging consensus on the unmet needs of stroke people, displayed their experience or the concerns of the public health service or home care resource indirectly, and created a comprehensive taxonomy of unmet needs, which may potentially stimulate service improvement
The present study generated eight categories of unmet needs which contributed to identifying potential unmet needs of communitydwelling survivors who do not live in institutionalized organizations
Summary
As the second leading cause of death worldwide, stroke is the leading cause of disability, and it has produced numerous disasters worldwide [1,2]. Stroke Statistics [3,4,5], the global crude number of novel stroke events has suggested a year-on-year increase, especially in low and middle-income countries. There are some inevitable problems when they come home. They still face a long and tedious recovery process (e.g., the return of physical, speech, cognitive other functions) [9]. They still have several unmet needs that should be met, as described in the study on discharge preparation [10] or transition care [11]
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