Implications for practice and research

• It is important that the benefits of stroke unit care are not diluted either by lack of appropriately skilled and experienced nurses or by resource pressures.

• Effective ways of delivering stroke unit care need to be researched in under-resourced healthcare settings as well as in higher-income countries.

Context

Inpatient stroke unit care, first introduced in the 1960s, is now the standard model in most developed countries. Since its introduction, however, there have been dramatic changes to stroke services, notably in hyperacute care. A number of different models of stroke unit care have also been developed and so it is important to compare these different models with each other as well as with standard inpatient care on a …