Hansard

I congratulate Gillian Mackay on securing this members’ business debate on the Stroke Association’s report, “Keeping Stroke Recoveries in Mind”.

As we know—and as we have heard from personal testimony—having a stroke is a life-changing event. Within a matter of minutes, a stroke impacts not just on a person’s physical health but on their sense of self, too. It often comes with a loss of independence and agency, and it can be a very difficult thing to adjust to, for both survivors and their families.

That is why this report is so important. Most of the focus is usually on physical recovery from a stroke, but that is just one aspect of recovery. Research undertaken by Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland found that people living with stroke conditions are at a significant risk of poor mental health, and the Stroke Association’s report points out that 95 per cent of stroke survivors report a change in their mental health as a result of their stroke.

I did not realise this, but apparently there are 1,800 stroke survivors in Dumbarton, and many of them have told me that they do not feel adequately supported in dealing with their mental health. The report that we are discussing helpfully outlines the important role that NHS Scotland can play in ensuring that the mental and psychological needs of stroke survivors will be met.

Feeding good psychological care into clinical practice is not beyond us. There can be a holistic, needs-based approach to stroke care, but that is currently missing in the service. It can be achieved by educating and training staff and ensuring that they are supported in their roles to enable them to take on the relevant additional tasks.

The 2022 report on the Scottish stroke improvement programme, which was published earlier this year, showed that too many stroke patients did not get the care that they needed over the past year. I appreciate that there was a pandemic, but the challenges pre-date Covid. I think that we can all agree that healthcare staff have been incredible, working around the clock to look after patients; however, they are exhausted, and the system is failing them, too. We all acknowledge that improvements in stroke care can and should be delivered, but they cannot happen without ensuring decent pay and safe staffing levels. Healthcare staff are already at breaking point, and it is important that, when we ask more of them, we support them properly—and that that goes beyond warm words. We actually need to act.

It is also important to note that there is significant variation between health boards in performance against stroke care standards. We should be able to have the same standards—but better standards—wherever we are in Scotland, and it is vital that, when seeking to address psychological stroke care, we do not replicate that same trend of variation.

Stroke care, if it is to be effective, should extend beyond a stay in hospital, given that 68 per cent of people say that they did not feel that they got enough support once they were at home and away from hospital. At the last election, the First Minister pledged to support the roll-out across the country of Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland’s hospital to home service; indeed, that is something that we would all support. The service already offers support to 38,000 people who are living at home with chest, heart and stroke conditions, and I hope that the Scottish Government will do more to honour that commitment, as the service is not yet provided across all 14 health boards.

Finally, I hope that those issues will be addressed by the Government to allow health boards to appropriately resource and deliver the progressive stroke pathway that we all agree is desperately needed.