Lightning Learning: Improving Knowledge of Parkinson's Disease in Nurses and Healthcare Assistants on a Frailty Unit

Introduction: People living with Parkinson's disease are frequently admitted to hospital, with many receiving care on frailty units. Timely medication administration for these patients is essential to reduce morbidity, mortality and length of stay. Current national evidence suggests that this is often not achieved. We therefore sought views from frailty unit staff to understand local barriers and develop a solution. A frequent theme was limited understanding of Parkinson's disease medications and the importance of timely administration. Based on these findings, we developed a 15-minute tutorial on Parkinson's disease for nursing and healthcare assistant colleagues.

Methods: We delivered the tutorial twice on our frailty unit. Participants completed identical six-item Likert-scale questionnaires before and after the tutorial to assess self-reported knowledge across six domains. Completion of the questionnaire was voluntary and not a prerequisite to join the teaching session.

Results: 29 nurses and healthcare assistants participated in total. Self-reported knowledge improved across all six domains. Averaged across all six domains, 6.5% of participants rated their knowledge as excellent pre-course versus 28% post-course. Knowledge of non-motor symptoms showed the greatest improvement, with the proportion rating their knowledge as excellent increasing from 3.7% pre-course to 31% post-course. Whilst overall results were promising, some participants still rated their knowledge of Parkinson's disease medications and swallowing difficulties as 'poor' post-course (13.8% and 10.3% respectively). We will therefore aim to improve this area for future sessions.

Conclusion: Our project suggests that brief, high-impact teaching sessions were associated with improved self-reported knowledge of Parkinson's disease among nurses and healthcare assistants. Such sessions represent a practical educational intervention within a busy NHS frailty service. Although this represents an achievable approach to improving staff knowledge within a busy clinical environment, more work is needed to establish whether this knowledge transfers to improved care for people living with Parkinson's disease.