“When we talk about stroke care, there are two different levels. On the one hand, there are so many obstacles, that are beyond our influence at the moment: The Public Awareness of stroke is too low, so people don’t come to the hospital in the therapeutic time window. Patients can’t afford the therapy.
But on the other hand: There are so many things, that are in our hand. And that is to have a stroke team, to have a stroke alert – and to have protocols so everyone here knows about the right treatment!”
That was how Dr. Alok Bahal commented not only the obstacles, but rather highlighted the chances in stroke care in BPKIHS. And that was our motto for the workshop in BPKIHS, which is one of the largest Teaching Hospitals in Eastern Nepal:
Let’s focus on the things that we can change!
…we love that attitude and mentality here in Dharan!
Within two days of entertaining lectures from Dr. Bhupendra Shah, Dr. Nishant Mishra, Dr. Alok Dahal and Dr. Christine Tunkl we learnt together, that there are so many (!) things in stroke care, that we can influence! We could all improve our skills in CT reading, NIHSS examination and decision making on thrombolysis or neurosurgical interventions. And we developed protocols for the hyperacute stroke care, acute brain imaging and when to do thrombolysis and even thrombectomy.
Our new stroke team leader, Dr Bhupendra, highlighted that even if the patients come “too late”, their outcome is in our hands, as we’ll be the ones preventing them from complications and recurrent stroke.
It was great to unite nurses and physicians from all departments that are involved in stroke care and spend a two-day workshop with them! And what a win for BPKIHS to have a team under the guidance of Dr Bhupendra here! So what’s our next step: Let’s monitor the data and show off to the world about the quality stroke care in B.P.Koirala Health Institute!
Oh and…we all know, that too many patients come out of the time window for thrombolysis – but we decided to see that as our task as well: So it’s up to all of us in the workshop to spread the message about stroke, to share the information on stroke with all our friends. And Patrick gave us quite a good inspiration of how we can do so … So we are waiting for your TikTok-Videos!