UCC PD Clinic Audit Report

On World Parkinson’s day (Thursday 11^th April), the first ever national audit of Parkinson’s Disease care in Ireland was published by the UCC Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation.

It shows areas of good practice, with many areas for improvement in specialist PD care.

The aim of this audit is to provide information on how Movement Disorder services in Ireland are delivering timely, responsive and patient centred multi-disciplinary care to patients who have Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

Eleven clinics across Ireland that provide Parkinson’s Disease care were involved in the audit, with patient cases assessed to examine the type of care provided to those who have PD.

Dr Emma O’Shea of UCC Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation said: “While it can be difficult to get buy-in from busy healthcare professionals for an audit of this scale, we received outstanding support from specialist PD care providers, who have been pleading for additional resources to increase capacity for PD care within the HSE. 

“The findings point to the lack of PD services to meet the ever-growing population-level need. More specifically, we need more PD nurse specialists, who are well-placed to coordinate a more holistic approach to PD care.

“We currently have 12 PD nurses in post, when we should have upwards of 35 to meet population need in line with international guidance. This situation is resulting in sub-optimal PD care, especially for the assessment and management of non-motor symptoms. This problem isn’t going away, it will only deepen without state intervention.”

The audit concludes that non-pharmacological care needs to be improved throughout Ireland. Along with this, access to PD Nurse Specialists was quite limited throughout the country. This mirrors the findings of a previous national survey of people living with PD and linked qualitative evidence as part of the overall Mapping PD project.

To read the full report, please click here.

The launch was also recorded, if you would like to watch it please click here.