CORPUZ, LORELYN S.

3BSN-3

NIH STROKE SCALE

Medical professionals and even the public have been trained to recognize basic signs of
stroke. Certain method from a television series is the FAST Method. This method include three
features of stroke: slurred speech, drooping of one outstretched arm, and drooping of one side of
the face when attempting to smile. IN addition, time of the onset of the symptoms is most
important when planning what interventions to include.

When one of these signs is present, it is obviously a sensitive indicator of stroke. When
all three are present, sensitivity for stroke is approximately 90% or it is going to happen any
minute or already happening at the moment.

To further assess and/or evaluate a client’s manifestations, they utilize the National
Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) in an approach to provide human subject protection
and patient safety. The said scale is a systematic assessment tool that provides a quantitative
measure of stroke-related neurologic deficit. Originally, this tool is used as a research tool to
measure baseline data on patients in acute stroke clinical trials. Currently, the scale is also widely
used as a clinical assessment tool to evaluate acuity of stroke patients, determine appropriate
treatment, and predict patient outcome. It can also be used as a clinical stroke assessment tool to
evaluate and document neurological status in acute stroke patients.

Assessment is an essential nursing skill that gathers clinical information to strengthen

decisions about health interventions and priorities inpatient care delivery especially with patient
who have critical cases or condition that is very unpredictable like stroke. Therefore, with
evidence-based assessment tool like NIHSS will improve the care and interventions provided by
the nurses. It will also help them to communicate accurately what they have observed and the
data they have obtained from the patient to the attending physician of the client or any of the
other medical professionals related to the patient’s condition.
 Additionally, NIHSS is useful in identifying patients at highest risk for intracranial
hemorrhage and those not responding to rt-PA. It is widely used by neuroscience nurses because
it has a high degree of both reliability and validity according to several studies. It can help
clinicians decide whether to provide thrombolytic treatment, rehabilitation or a combination of
both in these patients and decrease the mortality rate (Farooque et al., 2020).

Hence, as a student nurse, to be familiarized and knowing this scale by heart will always
be useful in many ways that I will encounter later.

References:

Spilker J;Kongable G;Barch C;Braimah J;Brattina P;Daley S;Donnarumma R;Rapp K;Sailor S;,
J. (1997). Using the NIH stroke scale to assess stroke patients. the NINDS RT-Pa Stroke
Study Group. The Journal of neuroscience nursing: journal of the American Association of
Neuroscience Nurses. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9479660/

Lowe, R. (2022) NIH stroke scale, Physiopedia. Available at: https://www.physio

pedia.com/NIH_Stroke_Scale (Accessed: January 31, 2023).

Farooque U;Lohano AK;Kumar A;Karimi S;Yasmin F;Bollampally VC;Ranpariya MR;, U.

(2020). Validity of National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale for severity of stroke to
predict mortality among patients presenting with symptoms of stroke. Cureus. Retrieved
February 1, 2023, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33042693/