Our active research team pioneer new forms of osteopathic research and contribute to the body of knowledge about osteopathy.
A new drug-free approach for people with painful diabetic neuropathy: The NeuOst study
Do you live with diabetes and experience nerve pains in your feet? The NeuOst Study is now recruiting people like you! Find out below how to take part.
The Osteopathy, Mindfulness and Acceptance-based Programme (OsteoMAP) was an innovative three year cohort study examining the effects of integrating psychological interventions based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with osteopathic treatment.
OsteoMAP was the third in a series of research studies designed to expand osteopaths’ existing scope of care for patients with persistent musculoskeletal pain that could be partially alleviated but not completely resolved by manual therapy alone. The study was funded with a £256K Innovation grant from the UK Department of Health (ISRCTN 04892266), and developed in collaboration with Dr Lorraine Nanke, a Principal Clinical and Health Psychologist working with the Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Foundation Trust.
The study focused on patients who were already receiving osteopathy for long-term musculoskeletal conditions and courses were provided in the UCO Clinic and in two NHS GP practices in South East London. Patients who opted to join a course (n = 256) took part in an individual course of treatment, consisting of six one hour sessions combining osteopathic treatment with acceptance-based exercises and home practices to develop and strengthen body-based mindfulness and self-care skills. The course aimed to enhance patients’ resilience and wellbeing and their ability to live more active and personally fulfilling lives despite the probability of ongoing pain and physical limitations. Data was collected from a set of self-report questionnaires at baseline and after six months.
At six month follow up, patients (n = 79) reported improvements in their ability to cope with pain, be active and their quality of life. Future research plans include the design of a feasibility study for a randomised controlled trial to compare the effects of the integrated OsteoMAP approach with standard osteopathic or medical care.
Extra information
Submitted date: Wednesday, August 10, 2016Categories: OsteoMAP
Building an evidence base for osteopathy in the care of infants.
The UCO and the National Council for Osteopathic Research (NCOR) are pleased to announce a new ‘Crying, Unsettled and DisTressed Infants: Effectiveness Study’ – the CUTIES trial.
The trial team has secured resources to conduct a randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of osteopathic care for the treatment of distressed, unsettled and excessively crying infants (babies with colic/silent reflux).
Professor Dawn Carnes, Director of NCOR and Professorial Research Fellow at the UCO, is leading the trial which will be funded by NCOR and sponsored by the UCO. The European School of Osteopathy has confirmed their collaboration, and the team has also established links with osteopathic universities in Australia and Switzerland as potential recruiting sites, making this a multi-centred international study.
Professor Carnes said:
“We are now recruiting infants into the CUTIES study. We have 2 recruiting sites up and running in Borough, London at the UCOsteopathy clinic and in Maidstone at the European School of Osteopathy clinic. We also have some CUTIES trained osteopaths working in Kent, the Midlands, South West and Scotland.”
The project has received UCO and NHS ethics approval to carry out the study and the trial is now registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry.
We are looking for babies less than 10 weeks old, who cry excessively and are difficult to console. Excessive crying is considered to be, more than 3 hours per day for 3 days or more a week. are investigating whether osteopathic care is effective in helping babies cry less. CUTIES researchers would like to study whether an osteopathic approach using gentle ‘hands-on’ techniques works in providing some relief.
The results will help parents in the future decide what treatments are best for their babies.
Extra information
Author: Original Author – Prof. Dawn Carnes, UCO Research
Submitted date: Tuesday, April 9, 2019
An investigation of osteopaths’ therapeutic approaches to practice:
A national cross-sectional survey.
This international study is being led by Dr Oliver Thomson, Associate Professor, and member of the UCO research department. He is collaborating with researchers from the UK (Dr Jerry Draper-Rodi, UCO), Australia (Dr Brett Vaughan, University of Melbourne, Dr Gopi McLeod Southern Cross University and Michael Fleischmann, Torrens University) and Italy (Dr Francesco Cerritelli, COME Collaboration), and New Zealand (Dr Kesava Sampath, Wintec). The Osteo-TAQ program of research is an international collaboration through the University of Technology Sydney Osteopathic Leadership Group.
Osteopathy has been viewed as a person-centred biopsychosocially-orientated primary healthcare profession. Initially considered to be based on traditional principles of anatomy and physiology, contemporary research from osteopathy and other healthcare disciplines confirms that the nature of clinical practice is complex with a range of different knowledge forms and contextual factors interacting in the context of an individual therapeutic relationship with the patient. Research shows that osteopaths display different approaches to clinical decision-making and qualitative research indicates that practitioners hold different professional views and identities in relation to clinical work, use of evidence-based practice and their osteopathic care of patients.
Research confirms that clinical outcomes in patients experiencing common musculoskeletal problems, such as low back pain, are influenced by a range of different aspects such as; the therapeutic relationship with their practitioner, the presence and impact of psychosocial factors and the biopsychosocial orientation of the practitioner.
As part of its professional maturation, osteopathy should continue to critically reflect on it’s traditional assumptions of practice and seek to generate evidence to understand the complex nature of osteopathic practice. To date, there has been very little research conducted into the nature of osteopaths’ clinical practice, nor how the different approaches that osteopaths take to their clinical practice relates to patient outcomes.
The Osteopaths’ Therapeutic Approach Questionnaire (Osteo-TAQ) is based on empirical qualitative research from osteopathy and theory from healthcare sociology and psychology. The questionnaire is designed to provide knowledge of the different aspects that make up the clinical approaches osteopaths take with their patients, how these relate to clinical outcomes and to offer directions to the role that osteopaths may play in the wider healthcare landscape, and identify areas to develop and support clinicians practice.
This study forms part of a broader international Osteo-TAQ project with studies planned in several countries including New Zealand, UK, Italy, France and Canada. The first stage will conclude commence in 2021, after which time the results will be published.
Extra information
Submitted date: Wednesday, August 11, 2021Categories: Osteo-TAQ
A qualitative comparison of assessors’ experiences of two different assessment methods
The UCO has recently introduced a new method of assessing students’ clinical competence as part of a longer-term initiative to widen the scope of curriculum supporting biopsychosocial, patient-centred and values-based care, and to enhance the validity and reliability of academic and clinical assessment processes.
Previously, final year students were assessed in two, four-hour Clinical Competence Assessments (CCAs), but they are now being replaced by Mini Clinical Examinations (MCEs), which provide briefer snapshots of student performance on more frequent occasions over two years of clinical education. Workplace-based assessments in medicine typically involve assessing practice behaviour and clinical reasoning processes during consultations in authentic clinical practice settings. Previous research has indicated that MCEs are feasible, efficient and able to differentiate between students at different stages of an osteopathic teaching programme in Australia. They can provide diverse formative feedback to develop skills, but may have lower inter-rater reliability if assessment criteria and behavioural descriptors are unclear or when examiners have over-lapping teaching and assessment roles. It has also been found that few students ‘fail’ an MCE, which may be due to examiners’ reluctance to fail students with whom they have close working relationships. Research is needed to explore examiners’ experiences of potential role conflicts and opinions about the value of MCEs in evaluating complex clinical reasoning processes needed in osteopathic practice.
The aim of this study is to explore tutors’ opinions about the benefits and challenges of the CCAs and MCEs, in order to improve future clinical education and assessment. It involves qualitative semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of UCO clinic tutors who are involved in assessing students using both methods. Data will be analysed using Thematic Framework Analysis with elements of Grounded Theory. The study is being led by Dr Oliver Thomson in collaboration with a team of educators and clinicians including Hilary Abbey, Francesca Wiggins, Simon Devitt and Mathew Cousins. It is due to end in November 2017, after which the results will be published.
Extra information
Submitted date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017Categories: Clinical Assessment Study
Patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) are used to collect information about the effectiveness of care from the perspective of the patient.
They are usually in the format of a questionnaire that patients complete before treatment and at the end of treatment. The initial questionnaire information can be used to inform patient assessments in general, as well as measuring important aspects of an individual’s experience of their condition. Follow up measurements are used to see to what extent the patient perceives that they have changed during the period of treatment. This information can then be used to feedback to individual practitioners about how their patients are responding to treatment, and also to inform the assessment of a particular clinical service as a whole.
The NHS is now widely using PROMS to measure of the quality of their services and identify where services can be enhanced (see http://www.hscic.gov.uk/proms for an example). It is anticipated that the General Osteopathic Council’s (GOsC) ongoing fitness to practice scheme will include information collected from patients, which might include PROMs. Some private practitioners are also using PROMs to demonstrate the effectiveness of their service to the general public and in supporting information in bids to maintain NHS contracts. The UCO is also developing PROMs to evaluate patient services, generate data about treatment effects, and provide students with opportunities to experience using PROMs in practice. This study is being conducted in collaboration with Arthritis UK and involves developing an electronic version of their MSK health measure.
Aims
Extra information
Author: UCO Research
Submitted date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Categories: PROMS
This international study is being conducted by a research team which includes two members of UCO (Dr Oliver Thomson and Dr Michael Ford) who are collaborating with osteopaths and researchers from Sweden (Dr Tobias Sundberg, Karolinska Institutet) and Australia (Dr Matthew Leach, University of South Australia; Professor Jon Adams, University of Technology Sydney; and Dr Phil Austin, Greenwich Hospital, Australia).
In the UK, the study is also being conducted with assistance from General Osteopathic Council (GOsC), the Institute of Osteopathy (iO) and the National Council for Osteopathic Research (NCOR).
The aim of the study is to identify the skills, attitudes and use of evidence-based practice (EBP) amongst osteopaths in the UK. A cross sectional questionnaire has been developed to assess whether osteopaths currently engage in evidence-based practice (EBP) and if so, to what extent; their opinions about EBP and levels of skill and training; to determine the factors that enable or limit osteopaths’ use of EBP amongst osteopaths; and explore what types of intervention would increase osteopaths’ use of EBP
Evidence-based practice (EBP) frameworks aim to improve clinical practice by providing a scientific framework to identify and answer priority questions about effectiveness in health care. It encourages health professionals to move from delivering care based on tradition and intuition to decision making guided by the best available evidence in combination with clinical expertise and patient preferences. Despite the advantages of EBP, there are concerns that some healthcare practitioners remain cautious about embracing this model of care. It is argued that failure to utilise EBP may delay the integration of innovative treatments in clinical practice, contribute to adverse client outcomes, and may reduce the credibility of practitioners who reject an evidence-based approach. EBP aims to improve multidisciplinary collaboration, the consistency of clinical care, and meet patients’ healthcare needs more effectively.
This study aims to identify osteopaths’ current opinions and practices, in order to develop ways of promoting appropriate EBP approaches and enhancing the quality of future patient care. The cross-sectional survey uses a 70-item questionnaire known as EBASE-UK, and the study aims to recruit at least 357 UK osteopaths. It will conclude later in 2017, after which time the results will be published.
Extra information
Submitted date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017Categories: EBASE
CROaM was a large scale, mixed methods study commissioned by the General Osteopathic Council to explore patients’ and practitioners’ experiences of adverse events and treatment reactions.
Questionnaire responses were analysed from 1,082 osteopaths and 1,387 patients, and qualitative interview data was collected from 24 osteopaths and 19 patients. The results indicated that minor short term treatment reactions were fairly common occurring in about 20 percent of consultations and serious adverse events were very rare. The study also provided helpful information about how often and in what ways osteopaths gain consent. The overall purpose of the study was to document reported treatment reactions and adverse events; to provide a description of UK osteopaths’ risk assessment and risk management; to describe and model osteopaths’ and patients’ perceptions and beliefs about adverse events and treatment reactions. The project also utilised short-term follow-up of patient outcomes to provide a narrative evaluation of the comparative risks and benefits of osteopathic treatment.
The value and need for this information arose from recent debate in the medical, scientific, lay and osteopathic press, specifically concerning the cost benefit and risk profile within osteopathy. More importantly, there was little existing information about adverse events associated with osteopathic treatment. Osteopaths also expressed concerns about adherence to elements of their Code of Practice in this area; these largely related to their ability to manage risk and give patients accurate and relevant information for the purposes of receiving consent from patients.
The aims of the research were to:
The research has now been completed and approved by the GOsC. A summary report of the CROaM Project can be downloaded from this page.
Extra information
Author: Steven Vogel, UCO Research
Submitted date: Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Categories: CROaM
The current UCO research ethics process and committee was constituted in 2005.
The UCO strives to produce work to high academic and ethical standards in all areas of practice. We believe that robust ethical review is an essential part of the research process as it contributes to assuring accessibility, quality and the safeguarding of participants and researchers. As part of this process all proposed research work undergoes ethical consideration whether it involves participants within the institution or outside the institution; this currently includes students and staff from the UCO and applications from external students and others who would like to carry out work usually involving our faculty, students or patients. The same criteria apply to funded or postgraduate research. We also review proposals from external institutions planning to research osteopathic practice outside of the institution.
The UCO adheres to standards of good practice identified in the Osteopathic Research Governance Framework produced by the National Council of Osteopathic Research. This framework was informed by existing national policy and adapted to the context of the osteopathic profession. Processes and procedures are reviewed and amended annually.
The UCO’s Research Governance and Integrity Policy and Research Misconduct Policy were developed in line with the UUK Concordat to Support Research Integrity, and set out our commitment to the following principles:
Research activities are underpinned by the UCO School of Osteopathy’s mission statement to: “continually provide the highest quality education and research for all and the very best care, for each patient, on every occasion”.
The values that guide these activities include a commitment to developing an open and honest culture of critical enquiry, scholarship and research, which maintains respect for the heritage and values of osteopathy. The strategies we have developed for research management and governance aim to promote high quality research and scholarship to support evidence-informed education and clinical practice within the institution and throughout the osteopathic profession.
The aim of the Research Centre is to promote research and evidence based practice in osteopathy at local, national and international level. Its core activities are to deliver high quality research from the faculty, in collaboration with other institutions, with stakeholder partners and to disseminate findings. We assist clinical staff undertaking research or audit projects, provide research training and teaching and supervise undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students.
The Research Centre supports the School’s values and has several key aims:
Our research funding and research travel grants are outlined below:
In addition to the research projects and publications led by our staff, we are also committed to disseminating the findings from high quality student research.
Student projects that have been accepted for publication in the last three years include:
Laurin, K L and Blanchard, P D (2019) Sensitivity and specificity of the Neuropad for distal sensory peripheral neuropathy (DSPN) in subjects with HIV-Infection: A case controlled observational study. International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 31. pp. 1-6.
Bar-Zaccay, A and Bailey, D (2018) The attitudes and beliefs of UK osteopaths towards the management of low back pain: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, 28. pp. 42-47.
The REF is undertaken by Research England. The next exercise will be conducted in 2021.
The main purposes of the REF are:
The REF assesses three distinct elements:
UCO is committed to joining REF for the first time in 2021.
The UCO School of Osteopathy is a small, friendly community. Our students quickly get to know each other and form supportive bonds which often stay with them for life.
Our student population is diverse, and ranges from college-leavers undertaking their first degree to mature students who are furthering their studies or looking to make a career change. Students come from across the UK and around the world to study with us, including from Europe, Australia and Brazil.
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