2024 Annual Demographic Survey of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Nurse Specialists

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative condition, ranking as the most common amongst movement disorders. In Australia, up to 150,000 people are living with Parkinson’s disease and this continues to grow each year (Mellick, 2024). People living with Parkinson’s disease benefit from the specialised skills and expertise of a dedicated Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders nurse specialist (PDMDNS) (Bramble, Carroll, & Rossiter, 2018). Access to a PD nurse embedded into the local health setting impacts the potential to avoid hospital admissions due to worsening of symptoms, improves quality of life through improved access to specialist services, and reduces carer burden. (Bramble et al. 2018). The World Health Organisation advocates for the tracking of healthcare workforce demographics and distribution trends, to ensure equity of health care services and robust economic planning to meet future needs (WHO 2016). The latter is equally as important as equity, as Parkinson’s disease costs the Australian economy more than $10 billion each year (Mellick, 2024). This paper marks the fifth publication in an ongoing annual series examining the longitudinal trends of the PDMDNS workforce in Australia (Williams et al., 2021; 2023).