Team:Newcastle/Integrated Practices
Integrated Practices
Summary
Project Planning
Overview: During the stages of planning...
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Parkinson's UK (Tyne and Wear)
Overview: Met Vivienne from Parkinson's UK... (see Public engagement - link to page)
Outcome: She suggested meeting with Richard Walker, specialist in Parkinson's Disease research...
Adjustment: As well as working with specialists in Parkinson's Disease, meeting with Vivienne showed us how important charities like Parkinson's UK is for people living with Parkinson's Disease and we decided to continue attending events ran by Parkinson's Disease in the area.
Next step: We contacted Richard Walker to arrange a meeting to discuss his research in Parkinson's Disease as well as to gain professional advise on our indicative tool.
Dr Dow Smith, General Practitioner in Newcastle.
Overview: Before retiring recently Dr Dow Smith was previously a locum general practitioner in a medical surgery located in Newcastle. We discussed current methods and issues associated with diagnosing PD, in particular using motor symptoms to diagnose PD. He thinks that other pre-symptoms of PD such as seborrhoeic dermatitis and depression lack sufficient positive predictive value to be useful.
Outcome: For our diagnostic tool, Dow made us aware that both false positives and false negative rates needed to be low for a diagnostic tool to even be considered in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. It was also noted that an argument against developing an early diagnostics screening tool would be the lack of evidence that earlier medical treatment is of benefit. However, if people were able to determine the likelihood of developing PD through systems such as ‘muninn’, then perhaps there would be a large enough incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to start developing alternative medical treatments.
Adjustment:
After speaking to Dow and his emphasis on ensuring false positives and false negatives were low, we realised our initial halo biosensor would be inaccurate and false results would be high. We changed to using plate readers to measure the fluorescence level as this would be more accurate and also readily available across many hospital labs
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Richard Walker
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Ms Rosie Anderson, local community singing therapy
The team initially met Ms Anderson at the August Marriott hotel meet-up organised by Parkinson’s UK. As one of the larger local PD gatherings, it is common for the volunteer organisers to arrange activities that help ease motor symptoms, in past meet-ups there has been the addition of yoga and even gardening. After speaking to members in attendance it was interesting and sad to learn that the NHS does not offer such activities for people living with Parkinson's, only medical treatments to manage motor symptoms. However, in the session we attended, Rosie Anderson was leading a local community sing-along. Ms Anderson has an extensive background in music and frequently leads ‘Singing for the brain’ for the Alzheimer’s society as well as community singing workshops at St Oswald’s hospice. The session started with some vocal warm-ups and quickly moved onto songs from the likes of the Beatles, Cliff Richardson and even a couple of local Geordie rhymes. All 22 attendees were enthusiastic and contributed to the best of the ability, many carers and regular attendees pointed out that it was the liveliest and most vocal some people had sounded in months.
Rosie strongly believes that singing is an effective form of speech therapy because people enjoy music and it connects them to both their past and their memories. She has been volunteering her singing expertise for just over 4 years now and is currently developing personal memory books in the project ‘Pieces of my jigsaw’, in which a person reflects on their life through stories whilst an artist draws, this will then be accompanied by a music piece composed by Rosie. Pieces of my jigsaw will debut in the new year.
Daniel Erskine
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