PWR! and the Parkinson's Foundation Exercise Guidelines
The Parkinson’s Foundation (PF) have posted their newly developed Exercise Guidelines.
I think we can all be proud that PWR! played a leading role in the development of these guidelines and would especially like to recognize contributions made by our own Becky Farley and Nancy Nelson.
-Adrian Hutber
PWR! CEO
PWR! is proud to have been involved in the planning and consulting of this important project to help exercise professionals design programs for people with Parkinson's that are research-informed. These guidelines will also be used to develop a competency framework to inform educational programming!
Directly from the PF leadership…
“And as you know, this is just a first step in many more to come.
We will be updating the webpage from time to time - including the Exercise Convening Summary Report, a more user-friendly community facing guideline infographic, our Exercise Competency Framework, and provisional Exercise Education Accreditation Program.
This day also marks a milestone to not only share Exercise Guidelines but to have a designated section for Exercise Professionals on our website. Our goal, with your help, is for qualified Exercise Professionals to be acknowledged as an integral part of the interprofessional care team for people with Parkinson’s.”
The official posting of these guidelines by the PF was the first component of “Phase 1” of this project. PF leaders tell me that they are hoping that the PF will very shortly give them approval for them to similarly post the 2nd component of this “Phase 1”, which is the accompanying competencies for both exercise professionals who would like to work with clients with PD, together with the program-centered competencies for community-based exercise programs like ours that are providing the training for exercise professionals. I will let you all know as soon as the PF posts these competencies. As many of you already know, these exercise competencies will be instrumental for both our Exercise Therapy Dept. and for our Education Dept.’s PWR!Moves exercise therapist (Instructor) course.
In the meantime, if any of you (ETs or PTs) would like to comment during the PF public comment period (which is open for 3 months), I encourage you to do so at https://www.parkinson.org/expert-care/Professional-Education/Resources/Exercise.
