Neurology Academy continues to flourish in 2017

The Neurology Academy has been extremely busy this year as our education programme continues to evolve to meet the needs of clinicians. In addition to our existing courses in Parkinson's, MS and Dementia, we have launched a Palliative Care Academy plus a number of new courses this year with more to follow in 2018.

We are very excited about the development of our new website which showcases the variety of educational courses on offer under the Neurology Academy umbrella. Each speciality has its own unique colour coding to differentiate itself, while still linking back to the Neurology Academy with the multi-coloured neuron logo.

The websites are designed amongst other things to showcase how MasterClass graduates are changing the face of patient care. Through their projects, which you can explore on the resources pages, graduates have implemented changes that are making a valuable impact on service development and a real difference to patient care.

The winner of this year's Parkinson's MasterClass Project Prize was awarded to Dr Frank Phelan for his video guide to diagnosis for Parkinson's and other movement disorders. This ambitious project aimed to create a educational aid which would bring together video clips demonstrating and comparing the features of Parkinson’s disease and its mimics.

Frank had originally been planning to create the resource using videos that had been uploaded to YouTube, but due to the unforeseen complexities of gaining copyright for this material he is now exploring alternative avenues. If you or a colleague have some footage you could contribute to the project - with the appropriate patient permissions of course - then please do contact the Academy. Frank is keen to make his project a reality!

We finished 2017 in November with a full three-day Multiple Sclerosis MasterClass, a project presentation day from our summer Parkinson's graduates, and a new Palliative Care MasterClass. It has been a very successful year for the Dementia MasterClass, and we are also delighted to report that a Headache and Migraine Academy will be starting in the new year plsu we have exciting plans on the horizon with the launch of both Mental Health and Addiction Academies, and additionally a series of roundtable events.

The Academy contributed this year to the Health Service Journal's roundtable on priorities for neurology in October. Prof Gavin Giovannoni attended from a clinician point of view and Sue Thomas from a policy and commissioning perspective. We will alert you to the online report and video of this when it is published.

Finally we’ve been pleased to develop relationships with RightCare this year to support some of our work and look forward to further working relationships in the new year.

We do hope to see you at a MasterClass soon - please pass course information on to any colleagues who may be interested in attending, 2018 dates are fully booked for some courses so it really is important to book early.

We wish you a very happy Christmas and New Year and look forward to seeing you at our future events.

Read the full Neurology Academy 2017 newsletter here