Abstract DP063: The Stroke Coordinator Welcome Workbook: A Practical Tool to Support Onboarding and Role Clarity

Background: Stroke coordinators manage a broad range of responsibilities, including certification requirements, clinical workflows, data tracking, team contacts, quality improvement projects, and oversight of facility meetings and committees. Their role extends beyond the hospital, requiring awareness of regional and national trends to keep programs aligned with evolving standards. Without a structured resource, onboarding can feel overwhelming, with wide variation in training and challenges when roles change hands. Methods: To address this gap, our stroke coordinator created the Stroke Coordinator Welcome Book as a personal reference while learning their new role and organizing the many tasks and requirements. Recognizing its broader value, a group of regional coordinators refined the content to make it more generalizable and adaptable across sites. It was developed in two formats: a digital flipbook with hyperlinks for easy navigation, and a fillable PDF workbook for individual use. The workbook provides general guidance on starting or managing a stroke program while allowing each site to tailor content for onboarding and regional differences. Results: The final resource is an 80-page workbook that brings together major elements of stroke program coordination. Content includes certification structures and compliance tracking, program staff and team roles, annual responsibilities, clinical pathways and guidelines, policies and procedures, documentation tools, and meeting structures. It also incorporates toolkits for things like stroke simulation and outreach, resources for patient education, and examples related to data tracking, meetings, and partnerships. Feedback from coordinators highlighted its usefulness in clarifying certification requirements, order sets, and committee structures, as well as reducing isolation among new coordinators. External stakeholders have expressed interest in adapting the tool for stroke and other time-critical diagnosis programs, and several health systems have already adapted the workbook across multiple campuses after identifying it as a potential best practice for onboarding. Conclusion: This low-cost, high-impact resource offers a simple way to bring structure to an often-unstructured onboarding process. As stroke programs grow in complexity, a centralized, editable workbook can help new and seasoned coordinators stay organized, aligned, and prepared.