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J. K. Vikan et al.
bilities for addressing sexual health, and education and
cultural sensitivity training for all professions working
in interdisciplinary teams. Creating a permission-giving
environment (8) will also make it easier for patients
and their partners to raise sexuality-related questions.
Using indicators for services provided at stroke units,
such as the Organizational Audit tool (24), can provide
useful needs analyses and an opportunity for measuring
improvements in sexual health-related practices.
In conclusion, sexual health policies in stroke reha-
bilitation are important, and such protocols need to be
implemented in standard care in order to meet the sexual
rehabilitation needs of stroke patients and partners.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the participating health-
care personnel for their important contribution; and additional
members of the Sunnaas International Network; in particular,
Edmund Shehadeh, Arkadi Rutgaiser, Youjun Chang, Manuel
Zwecker and Katharina S Sunnerhagen for approving participa-
tion; Denis Pyzhikov for his cooperation; and Åsa Lundgren-
Nilsson, Samir Banura and Fuad Luson for assisting on data
collection. Finally, we acknowledge Dr Catherine Barrett, the
Chief investigator of the SOX-program, for approving use of
the Organizational Audit.
This study was supported by Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital,
Norway, and financing the running of this study, included the
translation of the questionnaire into the reported languages.
The authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.
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