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Well the statewide stroke clinical network is a SA Health initiative which
strives to deliver the best practice across the continual stroke care.
As part of this initiative we've developed a pathway for SA Ambulance staff
to rapidly diagnose stroke and then subsequently contact stroke units directly,
with subsequent transfer, whereby potentially life-saving therapy can be delivered.
When someone calls triple 0, and we arrive, we assess them rapidly,
and the code stroke protocol has allowed us to formalise our assessment of stroke
symptoms such as asymmetrical weakness,
facial droop,
things like that which we can pile into a ROSIER score, we then call through on the
code stroke number to the stroke unit, speak to them directly, which allows us
to speed up the the time from the onset of symptoms to treatment quite dramatically.
The pathway has lead to a substantial increase in the number of patients
receiving thrombolysis in South Australia, and this will continue to improve,
as it becomes embedded in standard care. It's also important to know that
we are the first in the country to implement statewide pathway,
and we're hopeful that this will be adopted on a national basis.