A Red Deer Woman who suffered a stroke last spring says a new quality improvement initiative not only saved her life, but is also to thank for an almost perfect recovery.

Shelley Castor was in a Red Deer bank last April when she started to feel dizzy, and noticed her left arm and part of her face was going limp.

Her husband sped her to the hospital where she was then swarmed by nurses, stroke co-ordinators, radiologists, and neurologists

Shelley said it was because of that fast action, that she was able recover so quickly.

"At 5 a.m my hand was starting to move. The nurse came in and noticed my face was starting to come back. I had no feeling but my face wasn't droopy. This was all the next day, not even 24 hours after my stroke, and it was all because of the tPA drug. It was amazing, I just couldn't believe it."

Shelley was able to leave the hospital within 8 days.

AHS says someone suffering ischemic stroke has just 4 hours to be given the drug to clear the clot causing the stroke.

In fact Alberta's stroke treatment centres have become some of the fastest in the world, when it comes to administrating tPA(tissue Plasminogen Activator).

Starting in 2015, the Quicker Project was started to try and reduce the time it took for stroke patients arriving at the hospital to be given the drug that breaks through the clot in your body causing the stroke.

Neurologist Jennifer Bestard says they've not cut the average time door to needle time in half.

"When we started, we were at about 72 minutes on average. We're now down to about 36 minutes. We cut our time by 56%, and the question may be why do you want to lower this door to needle time? Because time is brain. There's about 2 million brain cells that die every minute that this drug is administrated."

An improvement of this degree hasn't been reported yet anywhere else in the world.

In the United States for example, a similar effort has seen their door to needle times shortened from 74 minutes to 59.