9
Active studies
Running now, each with at least one student attached.
Research · Thesis and research groups
Every studentwrites onereal study.
Not a literature summary. A question, a method, data collected in our own clinic, and a defence in front of three people who will argue with you.
Read the journalA profession that wants to be taken seriously has to measure itself.
Osteopathy has a long tradition of clinical reasoning and a short one of evidence. We teach students to tell those two things apart, and to be honest about which one they are relying on.
That means teaching method properly: how to build a question, what a control is for, and why most interesting results are smaller than they first look.
It also means accepting negative results. Several of our theses have concluded that the technique studied made no measurable difference. Those pass.
Research at CARPUS
3
Research groups
Low back pain, paediatrics, and measurement of manual technique.
100%
Students write one
A thesis is not optional. Nobody graduates without defending one.
The three groups
- Low back pain
- Outcome measurement in non-specific low back pain, using data from our own clinic with patient consent. The largest of the three groups.
- Paediatrics
- A cautious programme: what the evidence supports, what it does not, and how to talk to parents about the difference.
- Measurement
- How do you record what a hand did? Work on describing manual technique precisely enough that another practitioner could repeat it.
How a thesis runs
Eighteen months
- Year four, autumn
- You choose a question and a supervisor. Questions that cannot be answered in one year are refused, kindly.
- Year four, spring
- Method, ethics approval where needed, and a literature review submitted for comment.
- Year five, autumn
- Data collection, usually inside the clinic. Most students work in pairs at this stage.
- Year five, spring
- Writing, then a viva in front of a panel of three: your supervisor, an internal reader and an external one.
Ask a question you can answer.
Supervisors publish their current questions each September.
Prospective students are welcome to read them.