Primary Care & Health Sciences

Dr Jonathan Hill has worked as a Research Physiotherapist since 1999 in the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele University. He also works 1-day a week as a clinical physiotherapist treating musculoskeletal patients at the Haywood Hospital.

In 2007 Jonathan was awarded a 5 year Arthritis Research UK research lectureship award to provide research that has a direct benefit for musculoskeletal patients. This research is focused around three main projects, including a back pain clinical trial called the STarT Back Trial, which has demonstrated favorable outcomes for a stratified primary care management model for patients with low back pain compared with current best practice. He is also working on a NIHR funded project to develop a new generic musculoskeletal patient reported outcome measure (PROM) for physiotherapists to use to evaluate clinical services. Lastly, he is the principle investigator for a clinical trial investigating whether pro-active follow-up of patients following physiotherapy provides clinical and cost-effective outcomes.

Jonathan’s regular teaching commitments include:

• ‘Trial design’ for the Clinical Trials Short Course
• 'Designing a quantitative study' for MSc Rheumatology at Keele
• ‘Clinical trials design workshop’ for Pharmacy undergraduates at Keele
• ‘Clinical epidemiology’ and ‘Trial design’ for MMed Sci Research Methods and Stats and Epidemiology at Keele
• ‘Subgrouping low back pain’ for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Physiotherapists at Keele and Southampton University
• ‘The STarT Back approach’ for the Keele ‘Management of complex patients’ Course
• "Quantitative Research Methods" for Undergraduate medical students at Keele

At present I serve on the Arthritis Research UK Publications Review Panel, the British Pain Society Spinal Pathways Executive team, as an AHP National Research Hub Regional facilitator, and I’m running for election onto the CSP Council - researcher post.