The ATMRD Congress and Importance of Accessibility as a Clinician: Jill Farmer, DO, MPH

WATCH TIME: 2 minutes

“It’s important for communication with patients to be accessible because you want to empower them. You want to educate them. You want to be able to give them a vocabulary so that when they come back and forth for visits, they can really articulate what their concerns are.”

This year, the PMD Alliance, in collaboration with Georgetown University Hospital, put on the first annual Advanced Therapeutics in Movement and Related Disorders (ATMRD) Congress in Washington, DC, June 17-19, 2022. The meeting was filled with sessions and talks that featured practical advice and insight into the day-to-day clinical care of patients with Parkinson disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and other movement disorders.

Spearheaded in part by Fernando Pagan, MD, and the rest of the movement disorders program at Georgetown, one of the sessions focused on surgical approaches to Parkinson disease care. This talk was given by one of Pagan’s former fellows, Jill Farmer, DO, MPH, who is now an assistant professor of neurology and the director of the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Program at Global Neuroscience Institute. In her talk, Farmer explained to a crowded room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel that these surgical and device options should no longer be looked at as a last resort, particularly for patients who are good candidates for these procedures.

At the Congress, Farmer sat down with the PMD Alliance to discuss the insight she gleaned from this first annual meeting and shared her experience learning under Pagan. Notably, she discussed the importance of being accessible to patients, and how it can ensure good communication during visits as well as an improved understanding of their disease.

Click here for more coverage of ATMRD 2022.