Four weeks following her stroke, Flora remains in hospital. She has mentioned to several members of the multidisciplinary team (MDT) how eager she is to return home and to resume driving her new automatic Mini Cooper which she purchased recently. She sees no barrier to this.
Flora’s family ask what will happen regarding her returning to driving. Consider what you should advise.
A persisting visual field deficit or a clinically apparent visual inattention are legal medical bars to driving and must be declared to DVLA. Such deficits may however improve with time. These factors are vitally important for safe driving and ideally a return to driving should not be considered until the patients post stroke recovery begins to plateau.
Driving may resume after one month if there has been a satisfactory clinical recovery.
Page last reviewed: 16 Apr 2021
