Evaluation of the Impact of an Individual Peer Support Intervention for Stroke Patients When Returning Home: a Mixed Methods Pilot Study

Going back home following a stroke is a key step for the patient and his or her relatives. Due to the brutality of stroke and increasingly shorter in-hospital lengths of stay, patients and their families must adapt quickly to the patient's new health functioning and the new caregiving and support role for family members. Peer support could be an innovative and inexpensive approach to addressing these issues. Peer-helpers are patient-partners who put their experiential knowledge from life with the disease at the disposal of other patients to offer them social and emotional support in the management of the disease in connection with care, social and community structures. Group peer support programs face organizational challenges and fail to address the full range of patient needs for stroke home visits. Individualized and more flexible support could better meet the needs of patients. Our hypothesis is that individual peer support improves quality of life and patient empowerment during the discharge period compared to usual practice.