Latest UK audit shows a mixed picture for Parkinson ’ s health services
The Parkinson ’ s UK audit runs bi-annually and was open to all occupational therapy services seeing a minimum of 10 patients with idiopathic Parkinson ’ s , within the data collection period of 1 May 2022 to 30 September 2022 .
The data collection comprised of a service audit , a patient audit , and a Patient Reported Experience Measure ( PREM ); 506 services ( including 53 occupational therapy services ) took part in the 2022 audit , reporting on care provided to 9,760 people with Parkinson ’ s .
The audit is also open to elderly care , neurology , physiotherapy and speech and language therapy services who see people in connection with their Parkinson ’ s .
The views of 6,795 people with Parkinson ’ s and their family , friends and carers were collected via the PREM questionnaire about their experience of the service they attend . Positively , 84.5 % of PREM respondents rated the quality of service they receive as excellent or good .
Laura Hartley , Vice Chair , RCOT Specialist Section – Neurological Practice , Long Term Conditions Forum told OTnews : ‘ While workload pressures still remain high for many occupational therapy services , it is positive to see that the quality of occupational therapy being provided to people with Parkinson ’ s has not been adversely affected by the pandemic .’
The audit identified the following areas for improvement across all participating services : specialised multidisciplinary working ; standardised practices ; communication and information sharing ; medicines management ; and educating the workforce .
Due to a change in approach brought about by the pandemic , a new question for the audit explored how patients are seen ( video , telephone or face to face ) and a clearer distinction of tools used in occupational therapy clinical practice made between outcome measures and standardised assessments .
Evidence of good practice in occupational therapy included the use of person-centred goal setting and access to Parkinson ’ s specific CPD at least annually in 87 % of services .
All occupational therapy services were seeing patients in person , with phone and video followups offered , and referrals to address mental wellbeing significantly increased .
However , the audit showed a need for earlier referral to occupational therapy and shorter waiting times from referral to first session . Only 32 % of patients were referred within the first two years of diagnosis , and 12 % waited longer than the NHS ‘ referral to treatment ’ target of 18 weeks .
Outcome measures were used by 79.2 % of audited services and standardised assessments were reported to be completed in only 38 % of the audited patient cases .
Only
32 %
of patients were referred within the first two years of diagnosis
While a direct comparison of standardised assessments used by occupational therapy was not explored in this audit , previous UK Parkinson ’ s audits have shown that the assessment tools and measures used by occupational therapists are wide and varied , with this being recognised in RCOT ’ s best practice guidance , with there being ‘ no standardised specific Parkinson ’ s OT assessment ’ and ‘ no single uniform assessment used by UK OTs ’.
Laura added : ‘ This can be challenging for occupational therapists , particularly if they ’ re newly qualified or not experienced in working with this patient group , and for some settings it may not always be appropriate or practical to use a standardised tool .’
The RCOT best practice guide , Occupational therapy for people with Parkinson ’ s , is due for an update this year and this will set out to review new emerging evidence in Parkinson ’ s to support occupational therapy assessment and treatment and promoting standards of good practice , in which future audits can be measured against .
The results of the 2022 UK Parkinson ’ s Audit are can be found at www . parkinsons . org . uk / audit . Each participating service can access a report of their audit results and benchmark their data against the national results .
Download Occupational therapy for people with Parkinson ’ s at https :// bit . ly / 3TRkwU1 .
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8 OTnews April 2023