From WPC 2023
From WPC 2023
Our poster paper
Sally Bromley
For those who aren’t aware, I get about a bit! I have fingers in many pies and I enjoy fiddling about. I do quite a bit of work with students. In Reading University I inform their Pharmacy students about living with Parkinson’s. Here in Oxford, I am an EPT… Expert Patient Tutor. I meet medical students to tell them what it’s like living with a neurological condition. Several years ago, when Gabriel de Luca came to Oxford he expressed his concern that few newly qualified doctors wished to focus on neurological conditions. This phenomenon is called neurophobia, and it is endemic worldwide.
He felt that these young doctors needed to find out more about neurological conditions in order that they may make an informed choice about deciding if this is an area they wish to pursue. By introducing the EPT, in a non clinical setting, these students discover they are interested and even keen to find out more. Gabriel de Luca and Gina Hadley, both from Oxford University, and I decided we’d produce a poster paper for display at the WPC in Barcelona and we were really pleased that the abstract we sent in was accepted. Here I am with Gina ready to tell visitors about our poster and how EPTs support the training of medical students.
The poster was titled Eradicating Neurophobia through Expert Patient Tutors: the Parkinson’s Perspective. About a month before the Congress we heard that the poster was among the top 15% of those with good impact. Our ‘prize’ was that it featured in a poster tour where a group of interested people come to your poster and ask questions.
Fast forward to the congress… There were nearly 800 posters displayed. How ours was singled out I don’t know. It was a pleasure to talk to people who were keen to find out more, and for the poster tour we had around 20 people visit.
You can see the full poster by following this link. If you are interested in becoming an EPT to help medical students understand about Parkinson’s do contact me - sbromley@parkinsons.org.uk