A new MasterClass season begins



by Dr Peter FletcherFletcherParkinson's Awareness Week has come and gone, it's almost June so it must be the start of our Parkinson's Academy MasterClass season.Our Advanced MasterClass kicks off on Tuesday 7 June for 3 days and its 26 participants feature a rich mix of experienced clinicians from the specialties of Care of the Elderly, Specialist Nursing, Rehabilitation Medicine, Psychiatry and Pharmacy. As ever the teaching Faculty is drawn from a similar breadth of professions which like those of our participants, have at their core, working with people with Parkinson's.Meanwhile our Foundation MasterClass in September 2016 is fully booked and we are now taking bookings for March 2017.Further developments are featured in our Neurology Academy summer newsletter to which I would add two that occur on a less than annual basis!The first is the World Parkinson's Congress (WPC) 19 to 23 September in Portland, Oregon. I have been on the Program Committee and chaired the Comprehensive Care Subcommittee (see the programme here). I hope you agree that there really is something for everyone and with so many parallel sessions an opportunity to fill pretty much every minute of the waking day. The opportunities for networking are as you would expect truly awesome. That said Oregon in general and Portland in particular look very beautiful and worth a visit in their own right should participants seek respite.The WPC comes around every 3 years. On something more akin to a 10+ year cycle are new drugs for Parkinson's and this year sees the launch of safinamide a truly new drug (as opposed to the reformulation of existing drugs). This is certainly something for us to discuss in our forthcoming MasterClasses and in the wake of the PDMED studies it will be interesting to see how this new drug fits into our prescribing algorithms.More on all of this in the next edition of our Parkinson's Academy Newsletter Moving On.
'The things you can't get from the books'

Parkinson's Academy, our original and longest running Academy, houses 20 years of inspirational projects, resources, and evidence for improving outcomes for people with Parkinson's. Led by co-founder and educational director Dr Peter Fletcher, the Academy has a truly collegiate feel and prides itself on delivering 'the things you can't get from books' - a practical learning model which inspires all Neurology Academy courses.