Abstract

Cerebrovascular diseases in Korea is an important health problem since mortality and mobidity have been increasing rapidly. Cerebrovascular diseases marked the 2nd rank of cause specific death rate in 1993. The ploblem of emotion after a stroke has received very little attention from the nursing profession until recently. Even the frequency of the emotional disorder after stroke is uncertain, and there has been very little research. Emotional disorder after stroke was related to limited social function, guilty conscience, helplessness, hopelessness, powerlessness, alienation, and damage of self-image. In the stroke patient, hope may be related to a rehabilitation or enhancing physical condition. Inspiring hope is necessary when stroke patients are unable to mobilize energy on their own behalf and perceive limited or no person choices available. Inspiring hope is an intervention that can be used with many nursing diagnoses, especially when feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, powerlessness, and depression are present. The nurse can inspire hope by understanding the hoping process. On the basis of this literature review, the following suggestions are prosed. 1) Qualitative studies on hope have been done to indentify variables that affect maintenance of hope in the chronically ill patients. 2) In the development of an instrument to measure hope, the validity, reliability, and cultural property of the hope have been estabilished.