Excellence in Professional Education Programmes

Summary of work

Within the neurological diseases, Parkinson’s disease (PD) poses a unique challenge. Several aspects of PD make it difficult to communicate with patients and as the disease progresses, this difficulty increases. Time constraints often create a challenge for optimal dialogue and education. However, interaction is critical since involvement in therapy decisions correlates with significantly higher levels of satisfaction in people with Parkinson’s and in turn patient satisfaction is significantly associated with quality of life.

There is a real clinical need to improve this HCP-patient partnership in PD. The question is how to meet the clinical need to enhance communication and improve outcomes for patients?

PD Communicate is an expert-led training programme that pioneers change in clinical practice. It provides clinically-relevant training in motivational interviewing, a patient-centred communication approach that has proved effective in other chronic conditions; education on aspects of communication relevant to PD; and provision of supporting tools.

The programme has improved relationships; with patients perceiving a 1.4-fold increase in physician empathy, according to the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, after HCP participation in the programme. Over 50 HCPs from 16 countries are now advocates and the programme will reach over 1000 HCPs across Europe by the end of this year.

Judges comments

A strong, personalised, evidence-based programme with a multi-faceted approach that was serious about behaviour/practice change and had a great roll-out.  It left us wanting more as it is still in the early stages of evaluation - very promising.