In this episode:

• Stroke care in Ukraine from the early 2000s

• Becoming a neurologist
• Stroke education outside Ukraine
• Making a decision to change the system
• Coorperation with the Ministry of Health
• Training the next generation of neurologists
• Something missing in the centre of Europe
• A family of stroke care reformers

Ukrainian neurologist, Dmytro Lebedynets is head of the Stroke Center at Feofania Hospital in Kyiv, associate professor at Kharkiv National University, and founder of the Ukrainian Stroke Medicine Society.

He steers a group of experts in neurology and neurosurgery in the Ukrainian Ministry of Health who in the past five years have made Ukraine an outstanding example of how to build and improve stroke care. 

While enrolled in the European Master Program in Stroke Medicine in Krems, Austria, Dmytro became aware that Ukrainian stroke care lagged far behind that in most of Europe. It made no sense. 

“Ukraine is in the center of Europe. Why should we be nowhere? So that’s why I decided okay, we need to do something.” 

In a conversation recorded during ESOC in Helsinki, Dmytro describes how, over the next five years, Ukraine would become an outstanding example of how to build and improve stroke care, and what it takes to keep improving while your country is at war. 

He also talks about the decision to follow his father into neurology, at first reluctantly, and then in turn inspiring his younger brother, Paolo, to become the third stroke care reformer in the Lebedynets family. 

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