The 29th October 2023 marks World Stoke Day where the aim is to increase awareness and action on stroke. The ARC NWC Stroke IMPlementation and Capacity building Team (IMPaCT) Roundtable provides an overview of what’s happening in stroke care across the North West Coast.

Stroke services across England have been embarking upon large-scale service redesign, through the Integrated Stroke Delivery Networks (ISDN), to address the increasing impact of stroke and improve stroke care for all patients. Bringing about system-level changes is a highly complex process involving multiple stakeholders.

The Roundtable group discussions focus on a variety of topics related to improving the delivery of care for stroke patients (e.g. quality improvement methods, accurately capturing patient experience, integrating care across an entire pathway, and the role of data to measure change).

ARC NWC Research Capacity Delivery Manager and Research Fellow for the IMPaCT Theme, Dr Alison McLoughlin, has outlined one of the immediate priorities of the group “The Stroke IMPaCT Roundtable is currently undertaking a study exploring insights into changes made to services across the entire stroke pathway within the North West Coast region.This involves conducting interviews and focus groups with people involved in making changes and improvements to stroke care in this region. The findings will help with the understanding of what changes have been made, what worked well and what could have been improved.”

The ARC NWC Public Advisers act as a link between the Roundtable and other key public involvement structures in the ARC NWC and beyond (e.g. ARC NWC Public Adviser Forum, newly appointed ARC NWC Theme Co-Leads, Patient and Carer Assurance Group).“The advantage and benefit of being included from the onset of work which not only sets outs to achieve significant value to patient and family care and support but also provide a template for future similar roundtables. This is a rare opportunity to work on such a ‘big picture’ project where you are going to be able to see the entire spectrum of services/research come together ”( ARC NWC IMPaCT Roundtable public advisor).

(Pictured below: The Aims and Objectives or the Stroke Round Table.)