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The path to improving healthcare quality for individuals with complex health conditions is complicated by a lack of common understanding of complexity. Modern medicine, together with social and environmental factors, has extended life, leading to a growing population of patients with chronic conditions. In many cases, there are social and psychological factors that impact treatment, health outcomes, and quality of life. This is the face of complexity. Care challenges, burden, and cost have positioned complexity as an important health issue. Complex chronic conditions are now being discussed by clinicians, researchers, and policy-makers around such issues as quantification, payment schemes, transitions, management models, clinical practice, and improved patient experience. We conducted a scoping review of the literature for definitions and descriptions of complexity. We provide an overview of complex chronic conditions, and what is known about complexity, and describe variations in how it is understood. We developed a Complexity Framework from these findings to guide our approach to understanding patient complexity. It is critical to use common vernacular and conceptualization of complexity to improve service and outcomes for patients with complex chronic conditions. Many questions still persist about how to develop this work with a health and social care lens; our framework offers a foundation to structure thinking about complex patients. Further insight into patient complexity can inform treatment models and goals of care, and identify required services and barriers to the management of complexity.

Stroke is a leading cause of disability across the developed world, affecting an increasing number of younger people. In this article, we seek to understand the experience of stroke as a disabling life situation among young people and the strategies that they use to recover and cope. Directed content analysis was conducted from interviews with 17 community-dwelling stroke survivors aged 55 years and younger across the United Kingdom. The sample was drawn from a larger maximum variation sample of stroke survivors. Using the sociological concepts of biographical disruption and biographical repair as a guide, excerpts from the interviews pertaining to aspects of the patients’ life that were interrupted, in addition to how they coped with the changes, were selected and analysed. All individuals described an “altered sense of self,” a theme that included loss of identity, family disruption, and/or loss of valued activities. Individuals sought to adapt their sense of self by seeking external support, by restoring normality, and/or through positive reflection. Despite the adapted self that emerged, most individuals continued to experience impairments. While young stroke survivors adapt to their illness over time, they continue to experience impairments and disruptions in their personal and work lives. A holistic model of rehabilitation that helps individuals regain the capacity for everyday activities related to work, family life, and leisure can begin to address the emotional ramifications of diseases such as stroke, restore wellness, and work towards minimizing the burden felt by family caregivers and children.

Stroke care presents unique challenges for clinicians, as most strokes occur in the context of other medical diagnoses. An assessment of capacity for implementing “best practice” stroke care found clinicians reporting a strong need for training specific to patient/system complexity and multimorbidity. With mounting patient complexity, there is pressure to implement new models of healthcare delivery for both quality and financial sustainability. Policy makers and administrators are turning to clinical practice guidelines to support decision-making and resource allocation. Stroke rehabilitation programs across Canada are being transformed to better align with the Canadian Stroke Strategy's Stroke Best Practice Recommendations. The recommendations provide a framework to facilitate the adoption of evidence-based best practices in stroke across the continuum of care. However, given the increasing and emerging complexity of patients with stroke in terms of multimorbidity, the evidence supporting clinical practice guidelines may not align with the current patient population. To evaluate this, electronic databases and gray literature will be searched, including published or unpublished studies of quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods research designs. Team members will screen the literature and abstract the data. Results will present a numerical account of the amount, type, and distribution of the studies included and a thematic analysis and concept map of the results. This review represents the first attempt to map the available literature on stroke rehabilitation and multimorbidity, and identify gaps in the existing research. The results will be relevant for knowledge users concerned with stroke rehabilitation by expanding the understanding of the current evidence.