Professor Neil O'Connell
Professor - Evidence-Based Healthcare

Summary

Neil is Professor of Evidence-Based Healthcare in the Physiotherapy Division of the Department of Health Sciences. He divides his time between teaching and research and previously worked as a musculoskeletal physiotherapist. Neil's research interests focus on the evidence-based management of persistent pain and he has published extensively in this area. He also leads and teaches modules on clinical research methods and evidence-based practice for pre- and post-graduate clinicians.

Neil was the Co-ordinating editor for the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (PaPaS) group from 2020-23 and is a member of Cochrane's central editorial board. He was a member of the Guideline Development Group for the UK's National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2016 clinical guideline on the management of low back pain and sciatica and was a specialist committee member for the NICE Quality Standard on that topic. Neil is the current Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Methods, Evidence Synthesis and Implementation Special Interest Group (MESIGIG). Neil is the Scientific Co-ordinator ENhancing TRUST in Pain Evidence (ENTRUST-PE) network supported by the ERA-NET Neuron Cofund. See https://entrust-pe.org/ .

Qualifications

PhD, MSc, BSc (Hons), PGCert

Responsibility

Committee/ Management  Responsibilities:

UoA lead for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework exercise

Department Director of Research 2022-present

Department lead for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework exercise

Department Director of Postgraduate Research Studies 2020-2023

Administration Responsibilities:

Module Leader:

PH5640 Research Methods for Health Sciences

PH5603 Quantitative Methods and Design for Health Science Research

External Activities:

Member of the Cochrane Central Editorial Board 2023-present

Co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (PaPaS) review group 2020-23

Member of NICE Centre for Guidelines, Expert Advisors Panel

Past member of the guideline development group for the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline "Management of low back pain and sciatica" (NG59).

Past senior commissioning editor and contributer to the science blog “Body in Mind”. This blog represents an international collaboration of researchers with an interest in chronic pain, perception and the brain and aims to present current research in a format that is accessible and fun for the lay-reader. The blog archives can be found here: https://www.iasp-pain.org/content-type/body-in-mind/ 

Teaching Interests:

Chronic pain, evidence-based practice, research methods, musculoskeletal physiotherapy