Life Stories... With Dr Chris McCarthy

Dr Chris McCarthy is a Clinical Fellow (Associate Professor) at Manchester School of Physiotherapy. He researches musculoskeletal interventions including exercise in long-term conditions and manual therapy. Prior to this he was a Consultant Physiotherapist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, St Mary’s Hospital Paddington, London. After qualifying as a Physiotherapist in 1989 he undertook post-graduate training in Biomechanics and Manipulative therapy at Strathclyde and Coventry Universities before undertaking a PhD degree in rehabilitation within the faculty of Medicine at Manchester University. He was awarded a “Young Investigator of the Year” award in 2001, for his PhD studies, by the British Society of Rheumatologists.Following Post-doctoral studies, investigating the sub-classification of non-specific low back pain, he became an Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation within the Clinical Trials Unit of the Medical School of Warwick University attracting over a million pound of funding in two years. He has published over 60 peer reviewed papers on musculoskeletal rehabilitation and diagnosis and spoken at over 50 conferences.He has taught internationally on Manual Therapy, specifically on Combined Movement Theory, and lectures on five of the Masters courses in Manual Therapy in the UK. He is a member of the international advisory board for Manual Therapy journal and regularly reviews and publishes papers in the academic field of Manual Therapy. He is the past-chair of the Manipulation Association of Chartered Physiotherapists and was recently awarded a Fellowship of the MACP and Chartered Society of Physiotherapy for advances in Manual Therapy in 2010 and 2011. Chris’s book “Combined Movement Theory: Rational Mobilisation and manipulation of the Vertebral Column has sold worldwide. He is the clinical lead of The Manchester School of Physiotherapy’s clinical unit and supervises students, teaches and researches musculoskeletal dysfunction, and particualry spinal pain.