Abstract Stroke has become a major disease seriously threating human health due to its high morbidity, mortality and disability. Rehabilitation nursing care for stroke patients has always been a key part of clinical care. The neurological nursing managers should pay high attention to the issue about how to more effectively improve the level of nurses’ rehabilitation nursing on stroke patients. Therefore, this paper investigates the current cognition of neurological nurses about stroke knowledge, attitude and behaviour, and then analyses the factors affecting the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of stroke in the nurses, in order to provide better nursing services for stroke patients, and improve their nursing quality. The findings show that the different cognitions of nurses about their role have different effects on the knowledge, attitudes and behavioural levels of the neurological nurses; the nurses with more types of roles have better knowledge and behavioural levels of stroke.