About the Project

Parkinson's disease is a progressive brain disorder affecting approximately 127,000 UK people. People with Parkinson’s have increasing movement difficulties and many other problems including falls, bladder and bowel disturbance, low mood, anxiety, fatigue, sleep disturbance, pain, and impaired memory. This can lead to increasing disability, reduced quality of life and unplanned hospital admissions. Management is often complex, and guidelines exist, but access to specialised care is often limited.
Self-management can allow people to take control and improve outcomes in the face of restricted resources and fragmentation of health care. There is evidence that supported self-management for people with a range of long-term health conditions can be clinically effective, decrease health care utilization and does not compromise patient outcomes.
Our research to date has involved identifying effective self-management components for people with Parkinson’s, co-designing with people affected by Parkinson’s a supported self-management toolkit known as ‘Live Well with Parkinson’s’, and testing the feasibility of this. This phase of research aims to evaluate whether the toolkit is beneficial at helping participant manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life.

Who will be able to take part?

Eligible patients were identified, recruited and are being followed up in this study.