Nursing Management of Temperature in a Patient with Stroke

Fever is common in patients with stroke and is associated with worse outcomes. Studies in brain injury informed interventions commonly termed therapeutic temperature management (TTM) to improve the monitoring and management of fever. While the role and benefit of TTM in stroke patients has not been well studied, the nurse and healthcare team must extrapolate existing data to determine how to best monitor and apply TTM after stroke. Nurses should be knowledgeable about interventions to monitor and manage complications of TTM (eg, shivering), the studies underway to quantify the impact of fever treatment and emerging technology expected to improve TTM.