Exclusive: Chronic lack of consultants across UK health service means patients do not get drugs or surgery in time
Thousands of people who have had a stroke are ending up severely disabled or dying because the NHS has too few specialists to treat them quickly enough, senior doctors are warning.
A chronic shortage of stroke consultants across the NHS means that patients are suffering horrendous consequences because of delays in getting clot-busting drugs and surgery, they said.
“People are either dying or living with disability unnecessarily because they’re not getting the correct evaluation and treatment by the right expert at the right time,” Prof David Werring, the past president of the British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians (BIASP), told the Guardian.
Many hospitals cannot urgently diagnose stroke patients and give them time-critical treatment to maximise their chances of a full recovery “because we haven’t got enough consultants”, Werring said. “The shortage means that when people have an acute stroke, they cannot be sure of receiving an expert consultant opinion to get the right diagnosis and the right treatment at the right time.”
