National health campaign helps public to recognise stroke

Public Health England’s (PHE) annual FAST campaign, which looks to raise awareness with the public of stroke and its symptoms, is running until the end of this month.

Dr Barbara Paterson, Deputy Director for Health and Wellbeing for PHE advises the public that: “Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the country, and the faster someone gets help, the more chance that person has of surviving and avoiding serious disability.”

The campaign encourages people to become familiar with the ‘face, arms, speech, time’, or FAST test, which highlights the key symptoms of a stroke:

• Face – has the patient’s face fallen on one side? Can they smile?
• Arms – can they raise both their arms and keep them there?
• Speech – is their speech slurred or abnormal?
• Time – if so, time to call 999.

Here at EEAST we are encouraging all of you to support the campaign. You can do this by following PHE on social media and sharing or re-tweeting any posts that you see, and by spreading the word amongst family and friends.

Twitter - @PHE_uk

Facebook – Public Health England

Dan Phillips, Area Clinical Lead, said: “This campaign is helping to raise awareness and encourage the public to call for help. But as clinicians, we can do our bit too.

“As a Trust, we are achieving the target (98%) for stroke care bundles at 98.8%, which is fantastic, and I would like to pass on my thanks to all of you for your continued efforts with that. We are still working towards the stroke 60 target, but we are making progress.”

You can find out more about our national clinical quality indicators (AQIs), like stroke and heart attack care, on the NHS England website, and you can find out more about the FAST campaign on the Public Health England ‘Act FAST’ pages.

Published 14th March, 2017