Frequently asked questions

Yes

Yes you can. You will be asked to add your hospital/university/EMS service when you register.

Yes, you will be required to add them during your registration process.

Click on forgotten password. The password reset instructions will be sent to your registered email address.

Go to your profile and scroll down to where you are asked to enter your current and new passwords, then confirm and save. If you cannot remember your current password, follow the password reset instructions above.

Register on our website and go to the Angels Academy where you will find all the resources and training your team needs to optimise stroke care at your hospital. Read about what other hospitals have done in Community Stories and go to the Angels In Action page to find out about our latest projects, and to learn more about the criteria for qualifying for our awards. Go to Meet The Team to check whether there is an Angels consultant in your country, and if so, contact them at the email address supplied. If you need more information about events happening in your region or need help arranging training at your hospital, please click here.

Go to the Meet The Team section of our website and in the right-hand bar click on the region to find the bios and contact details for consultants in your country.

If you need more information about events happening in your region or need help arranging training at your hospital, please click here.

Our mission is to increase the number of treating hospitals and to support those already treating and who want to optimise their stroke pathway. We will do whatever we can to help your hospital become stroke ready. All our resources and training courses are available free to registered users. If you need more information about events happening in your region or need help arranging training at your hospital, please click here.

If your hospital doesn’t have a dedicated stroke unit, we can help you ensure that stroke protocols are implemented and stroke patients in your hospital receive the best care available, no matter which ward they are on.

We support any hospital that is interested in improving their stroke care, regardless of the resources they have available.

We support any hospital that is interested in improving their stroke care, regardless of the resources they have available.

An Angels hospital is one that has committed itself to improving its stroke care by enrolling with the Angels Initiative. The first step is to register on the Angels website and start sharing with the community. By registering they will gain access to resources for raising the standard of care for stroke patients, and if they meet certain treatment criteria and enter their treatment data in RES-Q or SITS-QR, they can become eligible for an ESO or WSO Angels Award.

If you are not already an ESO or WSO Angels Award winner, enter your team’s treatment data in RES-Q or SITS-QR to become eligible for a Gold, Platinum or Diamond Angels award. You can also motivate your team to sustain their excellent performance by aiming for an award on a higher tier. New resources to support your team’s performance are constantly becoming available on our website. In the Angels Academy you will find advanced training courses that may be suitable for your team. As a high-performing hospital, you and your team are encouraged to help other hospitals in your city or region achieve the same level of performance by sharing your knowledge at Angels Days and regional meetings.

Go to Angels In Action. Scroll down to the Photo Wall and click on Upload Your Photo. To share your photograph, enter your Photo Title with all the relevant information about the picture and click on Submit Photo Now. Please note that images should be in .jpg, .gif or .png format, and not larger than 3MB. Only one upload is possible per submission.

Click on Submit Your Story at the top of the Community Stories page and follow the instructions to upload your story, then contact our writer annelize.visser@gmail.com to let her know a submission is waiting for approval. She will publish your story on our website. She can also edit your story or even write it for you. In addition to our website, we regularly place stories in the International Journal of Stroke, the Interventional Neuroradiology Journal and in The Angels Journey, our quarterly supplement to the European Stroke Journal. Get in touch if you have a story about your hospital or EMS service that you would like to share in these publications.

All course offered in the Angels Academy are free to registered users. Registration is free.

Anyone can enrol for any course in the Angels Academy. If you are not sure which course is most suitable for you, we recommend that you check with your supervisor. You can also ask your Angels consultant to assign courses to you.

Courses available in the Angels Academy cover every aspect of stroke care. Courses available for EMS includes Advanced Stroke Life Support, the premier e-learning program for stroke education for emergency medical services. In the Post Acute category you will find courses specifically for nurses.

If you are not sure which course is most suitable for you, we recommend that you check with your supervisor. You can also ask your Angels consultant to assign courses to you.

When you log in to the website you are directed to your personal dashboard where you can view your e-learning progress, add courses and receive training-related notifications and prompts to guide and accelerate your training journey. You can keep track of your progress by recording your current and target performance metrics and access your personal trophy room where all the certificates you earn in the Angels Academy are displayed.

Courses are recommended to you via your personal dashboard based on the information you supply. However, you can enrol for other courses in the Angels Academy. Click on Full Course Library at the top of your dashboard to see the complete menu of courses available to you.

If your problem is of a technical nature, you can click here for assistance. If you are struggling to master the course content, please make use of all the learning resources offered as part of the course and under Learning Resources in the drop-down menu under Angels Academy, or ask your supervisor for assistance.

Certificates of completion are generated automatically once you pass a course. You can access them on your personal dashboard under My Certificates.

Click on Learning Resources in the drop-down under the Angels Academy to access learning resources in the following categories: Patient, Emergency Services, Hyperacute, CT Imaging, Decision Making, Post Acute and 12 Weeks to Helsinki.

Registered users of our website have access to all the material on our website. We recommend that you enrol your hospital in the Angels Initiative in order to receive even more support for your training and development activities.

The Helsinki stroke model consists of 12 interventions aimed at reducing treatment delays prior to thrombolysis. It was developed by the Helsinki University Central Hospital lead by Atte Meretoja. The Helsinki challenge is a step-by step video guide to help you discover how to assess where the bottlenecks exist in your hospital, some ways to get your colleagues on board with this new approach and the simple changes to make in your hospital to successfully reduce your DTN.

Evidence shows that hospitals using simulated patient training have significantly improved their performance in the long-term by improving their door to treatment time. Simulation training is made up of two parts. Part 1: The stroke team in the hospital assign a simulated patient and is asked to receive and treat the simulated patient as they would for real life stroke patients. Part 2: The hospital should assess the first part and make note of all the improvements and changes that they can make to optimise their pathway and reduce their door to treatment time. Once this assessment has been completed, the hospital should repeat the simulation and implement the changes they have made note of. Upon completion of Parts 1 & 2, the hospital should assess what improvements can be implemented to the everyday treatment pathway to optimise the quality of stroke care. Learn more under Hyperacute Resources here.

The Angels WOW CT Training, developed together with our partner Brainomix, has been proven to increase sensitivity in identifying early signs of ischemic damage by as much as 50%. Use this interactive tool to optimise your skills in CT interpretation to support treatment decision making. Find out more here.

Body Interact is a clinical system adopted around the world to train learners in decision-making and critical thinking, with lifelike virtual patients, in hundreds of clinical scenarios. Body Interact enables both medical professionals and students to accelerate learning, develop clinical skills and achieve excellence in their performance. Find out more here.

Advanced Stroke Life Support is the premier e-learning course for stroke education for emergency medical teams. It was developed by experts in stroke, emergency medicine, prehospital care and nursing education, and used to train thousands of EMS personnel, nurses, and physicians from hundreds of institutions across the US and abroad. This course provides a unique neurologic assessment tool, the MEND exam, ideal for both prehospital and hospital, together with practical video examples to support theoretical learning. Find out more here.

Hospitals that capture treatment data in RES-Q or SITS-QR apply automatically to the ESO or WSO Angels Award based on the quality measures outlined in the Tier System. Based on their performance against various measures, participating hospitals can be recognised with either a Gold, Platinum or Diamond level award. Read more here.

Hospitals that are enrolled with the Angels Initiative and have submitted data of at least 30 consecutive stroke patients in either the RES-Q or SITS QR Registry are automatically considered for an award. Whether they succeed will depend on their ability to meet the awards criteria. Find out more here.  

The awards are only calculated using data from RES-Q or SITS-QR. In some cases regional/national registries have arranged to transfer them data to RES-Q for this purpose. This has to be arranged between your registry co-ordinator and RES-Q.

We have a number of resources available for hospitals that want to track their performance, including our Time Tracker Poster where you can log your patient activity to enhance and improve treatment times, and Angels Plus, a spreadsheet for stroke process data capture and analysis. Find these and other resources for improving your stroke pathway here. 

The WSO and ESO Spirit of Excellence Award is awarded annually to individuals who have distinguished themselves through their commitment to stroke care excellence and their outstanding contributions to raising the standard of treatment in their hospitals and communities.

Candidates for the Spirit of Excellence Award are nominated by the Angels consultants in their respective countries. Contact your Angels consultant if there is someone you believe should be considered for this honour.

Information about past winners and nominees is available here (ESO) and here (WSO).