Use of the NIHSS by Emergency Department Nurses
Channel: Fairfield University
Date: 2022-05-20

A Conversation with Emma Sidoti

The NIHSS is used to assess stroke severity and monitor neurologic status of stroke patients. Nurses must use the NIHSS consistently to assess baseline neurologic status for stroke patients in the ED. At Primary Stroke Centers, clinicians must perform the NIHSS on every stroke patient at least once and more often for patients receiving tPA. Normally these patients would be moved to the ICU where nurses are able to closely monitor them, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, ICU beds were scarce and these patients remained in the ED. The NIHSS has since become more essential to ED nurse practice. Since the NIHSS is complex, those using it should complete a certification for how to score it properly. Most ED nurses have not completed this certification, so there is a learning need for ED nurses to perform the NIHSS accurately. This project includes some scoring rules and nursing pearls for performing the NIHSS that may be distributed to ED nurses to ensure accurate, consistent NIHSS scoring.

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