17 September 2010
A £760,000 cash injection has been made into funding extra doctors, nurses and clinics on the stroke ward at Epsom Hospital – an investment that will help to save lives and improve the time it takes patients to recover from a stroke.
The investment, which has been agreed by the Trust Board, will greatly enhance the care that we offer stroke patients. With five additional nurses, an extra stroke consultant, an additional speech and language therapist and a part time neuro-psychologist, the service will now be able to expand and offer more patients even greater care.
Dr Janet Putterill is a stroke consultant at Epsom Hospital. She said: "Evidence shows that giving stroke patients prompt treatment on a specialist stroke unit improves their chance of survival and can help them to regain independence more quickly. It is therefore essential that we can provide such a service and this money will help us to do just that. This is great news and we are very excited at the prospect of being able to offer improved services to our local community."
Additionally, the stroke service will begin to offer suitable patients thrombolysis (a drug that breaks down blood clots, helping to minimise the damage caused by strokes) on site.
The stroke team will also be running daily clinics for patients who have suffered a suspected TIA (transient ischaemic attack) or ‘mini stroke’. A TIA can be an early warning sign that a patient is going to have a full stroke, and it is therefore important that these people receive immediate medical intervention. At the moment, high risk patients who have suffered a suspected TIA need to be admitted to hospital for investigations and for treatment. Offering a daily TIA clinic will mean that we can offer this service on an outpatient basis and patients will not have to stay in hospital overnight when it’s not necessary.
Dr Steve Hyer, the Clinical Director of Specialty Medicine (the directorate that oversees the Trust’s stroke units), said: "Quite simply, this investment is going to help us save lives. It is essential that stroke patients receive immediate and effective treatment, and thanks to the extra staff and resources that we have been given, we will be able to extend and improve the service we are providing for local people."
The announcement has received support from local politicians too, with the MP for Epsom and Ewell Chris Grayling saying: "Stroke services are really important to the older generation in the Epsom and Ewell area, and so this investment is very welcome."
As part of the investment, £176,000 has been given to the radiology department at the hospital, which will help the stroke team get urgent scans of patients even faster.
