The Keele-Haywood Academic Rheumatology Group is a partnership between MPFT’s rheumatology, general musculoskeletal, spinal pain and chronic pain management clinicians at the Haywood Hospital, and Keele University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. We also have links with other Universities including Warwick, Birmingham, and Nottingham.

We are a multi-disciplinary team of nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, other allied health professionals and researchers. We have a number of clinical research and education programmes, aimed at improving understanding and management of common musculoskeletal conditions and chronic pain.  In 2016, we received international recognition as a EULAR (European League Against Rheumatism) Centre of Research Excellence.

Keele-Haywood Academic Rheumatology Group group

Research

We are interested in the causes, consequences, and optimal management of common rheumatological, musculoskeletal and pain conditions such as:

  • Inflammatory arthritis including:
    • rheumatoid arthritis
    • axial spondyloarthroarthritis
    • psoriatic arthritis
    • juvenile idiopathic arthritis
  • Polymyalgia Rheumatica and Giant Cell Arteritis
  • Gout
  • Osteoarthritis
  • Osteoporosis and fragility fractures
  • Low back pain and radicular pain
  • Regional musculoskeletal pain
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Chronic pain syndromes
  • Connective tissue disease

We support a range of studies in these areas, including how best to train and educate current and future health professionals to manage these conditions.  We use of range of research methods including clinical epidemiology, clinical trials, qualitative approaches and mixed methods. We also are actively involved in activities to improve the uptake of research findings in clinical practice.

We support a number of undergraduate and postgraduate taught and research students:

We work with public contributors in the design, delivery and implementation of our research. There are active patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) groups at MPFT and Keele University. Please click the links if you are interested in getting involved.

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