An osteopathic clinician's journey with research

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This webinar is about the research journey an osteopath took whilst still working in clinical practice. The webinar will explore why an osteopath wanted to undertake research and how he got started in his PhD. Dr Don Hunter (Osteopath), passionate osteopath and self-driven researcher, will discuss how an observation made in clinical practice was manipulated into a researchable topic and what studies were completed as part of his PhD. Don will also discuss how he juggled the time demands of doing research with his clinical practice and life in general.

Learning objectives:

• How osteopathic clinicians can become researchers (and still work as a clinician)?
• What are the benefits of doing research?
• How has participating in research benefited Don’s clinical practice?

The presenter:

Dr Don Hunter (Osteopath) has been an osteopathic clinician for over 20 years, 17 years of which was spent as a business owner and practitioner in Newcastle and he has spent the past three years in Tamworth as a sole practitioner. Don's impetus to support a practice he loves resulted in completing his PhD, following almost ten years of research. 

His research, which was investigating the relationship between thoracic posture and shoulder impingement syndrome (now called subacromial pain syndrome in medical literature) included case-control studies, randomised controlled trials and led to four published papers. As a clinician first and researcher second, achieving a PhD solely from discoveries in osteopathic practice is, to say the least, admirable. 

Don's hunger for knowledge continues to this day as he is currently attempting to complete two more papers from PhD results and be involved in more clinical trials where osteopathic philosophy is at the heart of the trial.

Don is currently on the Board of Osteopathy Australia and is part of the Research Committee.