🇬🇧 Joint lecture series clinical research on innovative healthcare

Current state of nursing care situation of People with parkinson’s disease in Germany

The complexity of chronic neurologic diseases increasingly requires personalized, interdisciplinary health care structures. Focusing on Parkinson’s disease (PD), this talk highlights that especially the (outpatient) nursing staff plays a key role in PD patient care with multiple interactions of this professional group with patients, relatives and other health care providers. However, the current Care4PD study as well as German but also international data showed an undersupply of nursing care for PD and lack of knowledge on PD relevant issues amongst this occupational group, especially in professional long-term care facilities such as nursing homes or outpatient mobile nursing services.

Thus, nursing staff should be trained more intensively on PD relevant aspects and should be more involved in fundamental health care issues – optimally integrated in cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary teams. Therefore, a rethinking and reorganization at individual and structural levels is necessary. The talk will give an overview on special activities in Germany that aim to reorganize nursing care for PD. Concrete examples are given, such as the work of different PD networks or the currently developed task force “nursing care” of the German Association for Neurology (DGN). Finally, such optimized health care structures as planned for PD could serve as models for other neurologic or non-neurologic diseases.