www.effectivestrokecare.org, the new website of the Stroke Therapy Evaluation Programme (STEP) has been officially launched in a direct attempt to break down the barriers that prevent health professionals keeping up to date with rapidly increasing volumes of high quality research.
Alex Pollock, physiotherapist with the STEP team, emphasised that this was a clinical tool designed to “leave the clinical decisions to the clinicians”, describing the effectivestrokecare.org database as a “clinical tool to assist stroke care staff make informed decisions about the treatments or services they provide to individual patients.” Despite this, several guideline producers have recognised the worth of the database in assisting the production of clinical guidelines and effectivestrokecare.org has already played a key role in the development of Scottish and Australian national stroke guidelines.
