Ron's a 64-year-old chap who's awoken this morning around 8am with some left side of weakness, also some slurred speech.
Hi Ron, my name's Emma. I'm one of the nurses. I'm just gonna have a little look at you. Can you smile for me, a really big smile?
Good job, okay. Can you squeeze my hands, tight as you can?
I think it's extremely important that when stroke patients present anywhere in New South Wales, they have access to the best quality care that's available.
I'm concerned that your symptoms are suggestive of having a stroke today. What I'd like to do is refer you to the TeleStroke service and also, and initiate a CT scan for you.
TeleStroke is a new model of care which allows stroke specialists like myself access to patients presenting to rural and remote areas. We have full access to patient imaging.
It also allows us to look at their imaging as it is being processed.
So the diagnosis is obviously correct. He's having a stroke and we can say that it's a fairly large stroke.
TeleStroke is important to a regional hospital like Coffs Harbour because it provides equity of access to specialist care for our patients.
Coffs Harbour Hospital is one of our rural and regional hospitals which has had a huge investment in both core-networking, HWAN, and wireless infrastructure over the last two to three years, which means doctors in metropolitan hospitals can now provide services to Coffs Harbour Hospital using telehealth.
It allows us to provide hyper-acute stroke care to all patients.
The same services that we can provide in well-serviced city hospitals. It is exceptionally quick and very, very easy for us to use.
You can see the patient, and you contract with the patient. You can examine the patient.
Which allows us to assess the patient as if we were actually there.
The important thing is that we've got a treatment for this kind of stroke, and it's a really strong blood thinner to try and break up the blockage which is causing your stroke.
Our clinicians get the benefit of interacting, collaborating with our specialist clinicians that are based elsewhere. That builds their skills, their knowledge base, and also their confidence in the treatment of stroke.
The TeleStroke pilot has proved to us that we're able to reliably provide telemedicine services using the Skype for Business platform. This proves that we could use this technology for many other specialties anywhere across the state.
The point of TeleStroke is that we identify patients early who are amenable to treatment. This absolutely will improve the outcome for our patients with a stroke from being completely dependent on carers at home to being somebody who's relatively independent and potentially being able to get back to work. This is life-changing.
I felt a gurgling in my neck. Everything went all fuzzy. The ambulance arrived and took me into Coffs Harbour Base Hospital. All symptoms shone towards a stroke. Once they determined that, they were straight on to TeleStroke to the specialist.
I've returned back to work doing the same job that I was doing prior to having the stroke. I'm back surfing again. To be able to paddle out and sit on the board, and just think all the thoughts away, leave them in the ocean is just the best therapy ever. Yeah.
I owe my speedy recovery to TeleStroke and what happened that day because specialists help was at hand so close, so quickly. I wouldn't like to think what it was like before that treatment was available.
