Background:
The NIH stroke scale (NIHSS) was originally designed as a research tool to measure baseline data on patients in acute stroke clinical trials. It is valid for predicting lesion size and can serve as a measure of stroke severity. The NIHSS has been also shown to be a predictor of both short and long term outcome of stroke patients. Additionally, the stroke scale serves as a data collection tool for planning patient care and provides a common language for information exchanges among healthcare providers.
Our program’s new strategy:
In order to improve the quality of our residents’ clinical assessment for patients with suspected stroke or unconsciousness, our program is implementing a new and very useful tool that will help residents get officially certified in the NIH stroke scale. This tool is also free for healthcare professionals!
All residents are now required to obtain the NIHSS certificate. The training materials for this certificate would typically take about three hours to complete. After creating your own account online, and enrolling in the NIHSS – Test Group A, your answers will be saved to your account as you go through the materials. These answers will be saved for you to complete your course for up to three weeks. After three weeks, your answers will be lost and you would have to go through the whole course again from the beginning. Each resident is requested to forward his/her certificate upon completion.
Residents who are going to be on floor rotations in the next module are strongly encouraged to take the course and get certified in the next couple of weeks. The rest of the residents are requested to complete the training and submit their certificates within 30 days from today.
Please note that there are multiple levels of certification in the NIHSS. You are requested to sign up for and get certified in the first level only (Test Group A). After completing the training materials for this level you will have the option of requesting your own certificate of completion through the same website.
> Click here to register for and start your certification course.
> Click here to review the FAQs
Regards,
Ahmed Alsolami