The RCSI School of Physiotherapy in association with the Irish Heart Foundation Council on Stroke Annual Conference hosted a workshop on ‘Outcome Measures in Stroke Rehabilitation' on Thursday, 11 April. The event was attended by over 100 delegates, predominantly therapists, nurses and doctors working in stroke care.

Speaking at the event was Dr Nicol Korner-Bitensky, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. McGill University, Canada and a member of the Rehabilitation and Recovery Theme for the Canadian Stroke Network (CSN). She discussed the role of outcome measures in the early assessment of stroke survivors including the challenges of assessment for the upper limb, cognition, executive function, unilateral spatial neglect and the upper limb.

Speaking in advance of the workshop, Dr Frances Horgan, Senior Lecturer in the RCSI School of Physiotherapy and Chairperson of the Irish Heart Foundation Council on Stroke said: "We are very honoured to have Professor Korner-Bitensky deliver this workshop and share her expertise with us. Stroke affects 11,000 people in Ireland every year, one of the challenges we face is to deliver cost-effective and evidence-based interventions, the key to achieving this is the appropriate application of outcome measures which are critical to the evaluation and assessment of treatment approaches."

Dr Korner-Bitensky is a research member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Rehabilitation Research of Montreal (CRIR) and REPAR, the provincial consortium of rehabilitation research. She is an honorary life member of the Stroke Society of Australasia. She has produced 120 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and over 400 talks related to stroke rehabilitation, interdisciplinary health service delivery, community engagement and driver-retraining post-stroke. Her research agenda is designed to impact on the public by enhancing health service delivery in stroke rehabilitation using innovative best practice websites that are funded by the CSN and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, including StrokeEngine. These sites bring information on best practices to clinicians, policy makers, patients and families. Her research also focuses on identifying effective knowledge translation strategies to increase best practices in stroke rehabilitation and eliminate ineffective practices. She works with an international team of stroke researchers, clinicians, policy makers and stroke foundations who together are dedicated to improving stroke rehabilitation.