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Extended Service for Specialist Stroke Nurses
Written by Communications Team   

The Specialist Stroke nursing team at Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is extending its service and will now be available to patients seven days a week.

Instead of running from 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday, a specialist stroke nurse will now be available to patients from 8am – 8pm every day through the week and across the weekend. 
 
 
 
Specialist Stroke Nurses (from left to right), Claire Barratt, Emma Fletton and Elspeth Caldwell.
 

Specialist Stroke Nurse, Claire Barratt, explains more: “We offer a very important service to patients who arrive in hospital with a confirmed or suspected stroke, and often we are the first person from the stroke team that a patient will see. When someone suffers a stroke, the most critical thing is to get speedy diagnosis and treatment. The longer treatment is delayed, the more damage a stroke can do to your brain. We can help to speed this up – for example, making sure the patient has quick access to a CT scan – and then making sure they are transferred to our specialist stroke unit as quickly as possible.

Extending to a 12 hour service, seven days a week will bring real benefits to our patients. We’ve also expanded the number of nurses in the team which means patients – and very importantly, their families - are able to have a dedicated nurse allocated to them who they can build up a rapport with. We can provide a lot of additional support to relatives and friends by giving them more information and also, very importantly, being there to listen and talk things through.”

The Trust has employed a specialist stroke nurse since 2004, but additional funding from the Department of Health and the Surrey Heart and Stroke Network has enabled the team to expand. There are now three specialist stroke nurses who are able to offer support to patients across both St Peter’s Hospital – mainly through A&E and on the specialist brain injury unit – and at Ashford Hospital where many patients are transferred for rehabilitation.

Claire wanted to add this advice: “Knowing the symptoms of stroke is key to getting the right treatment quickly. If anyone suspects they, or a relative or friend, are suffering from stroke-like symptoms, they need to call 999 as quickly as possible. Two million neurons are lost for every minute someone is having a stroke, so the quicker a person can start treatment, the better their chances of recovery. St Peter’s hospital is also able to offer a 24 hour thrombolysis service, which means we are able to administer clot-busting drugs, where appropriate, at any time of day or night.

We are seeing increasing numbers of patients coming to hospital with strokes or stroke like symptoms – there were 94 stroke admissions in December alone – so the more we can help people to recognise the warning signs, the more people we can help to recover. Simple things like having your blood pressure checked regularly can help to highlight early warning signs and prevent a stroke happening.”