King Charles honours work of pioneering Parkinson’s physio

CSP member Fiona Lindop, who works as a specialist physiotherapist at Florence Nightingale Community Hospital in Derby, was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of her services to physiotherapy.

Her honours citation described her as ‘among the top specialist Parkinson’s physiotherapists in the UK’ and noted that ‘over the past two decades, she has inspired and trained a generation of physiotherapists to sub-specialise in the condition.’

Fiona, who lives in Duffield in Derbyshire, told Frontline:

I am amazed and honoured to have been awarded an MBE. I work as part of a specialist multidisciplinary team in Parkinson's, and I have the huge privilege of working with a fantastic team of health professionals

‘We have built up the team and the service over the last 20 years and it has been awarded Centre of Excellence status.’

The Florence Nightingale Community Hospital is part of University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust and Fiona’s expertise and input has been instrumental in enabling the trust to be recognised as a Parkinson's Foundation Centre of Excellence (one of only two in the UK) and rated as Outstanding in 2019. 

Incredible contributions

Fiona has been running national Parkinson’s courses for nurses and therapists for twenty years and is the clinical therapy lead for the UK Parkinson’s Excellence Network, and a member of the Governance Board for the National Parkinson’s Audit.

She originally trained at Aberdeen School of Physiotherapy (now Robert Gordon University) and went on to work in various physiotherapy roles in London, Rotherham, Doncaster and York before she started working at UHDB in 1992.

In 2004, she developed a pioneering exercise and education group for people with Parkinson's. The groups educate and empower people with Parkinson’s and their carers, promoting self-management and encouraging an active lifestyle. 

And a few years later, in 2009, the Lindop Parkinson's Assessment Scale (LPAS) – which Fiona originally developed in 1998 - was officially validated. The LPAS is an evidence-based Parkinson's mobility scale which is endorsed and promoted by Parkinson's UK and now used worldwide by therapists to assess gait and bed mobility.  

Fiona has also acted as the physiotherapy representative on the NICE Parkinson’s Guideline (2017), and the NICE Quality Standards for Parkinson’s, and, in 2022, she was part of the Peer Review Group for Parkinson’s, which had responsibility for developing the World Health Organization’s Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation.

She is also the co-editor of a handbook on the multidisciplinary management of Parkinson’s, Parkinson’s Disease: a multidisciplinary guide to management  edited by Fiona Lindop and Rob Skelly, which was published in 2022 and aims to provide health professionals with all the information they need to help people with Parkinson’s.

And, in addition to all of this, Fiona also continues to give hours of her time to local Parkinson's support groups.

Teamwork and learning from people with Parkinson’s

As well as receiving an MBE, Fiona has previously been recognised for her outstanding contribution to the care of older people in the domain of Parkinson’s, as in 2021 she was awarded Honorary Membership by the National Executive Committee for AGILE (the CSP Professional Network for physiotherapists working with older people).

But, reflecting on her most recent honour, and her work over the last two decades with people with Parkinson’s, she told Frontline: ‘This MBE is a huge honour and I also dedicate it to the fantastic team I work with and the people who live with Parkinson's who have taught me all I know.

I feel so honoured and surprised, but I couldn’t have done it without all the fantastic people I work with and all of the patients living with Parkinson’s. It’s all about teamwork.

'I feel I have the dream job and have loved almost every minute of being a physiotherapist for the last 45 years! This MBE is the icing on the cake for an amazing career!'

Fiona added that ‘my daughter Hannah Hylton has followed me into the profession and is a specialist respiratory physio in London, and my niece Rachel Lindop is also a physio - working in Oswestry.’