Bart Staal PhD

Bart J. Staal finished his study Physiotherapy (BSc) at the Hogeschool West-Brabant in Breda, Bart Staal graduated in 1996 from the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with a major in Health Sciences and a subsidiary in Psychology. After his graduation, he worked as a physiotherapist both in Germany and the Netherlands. In 1998, he started working as a researcher at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine (EMGO-Institute) of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where he conducted a Ph.D. study on the effectiveness of a graded activity intervention for workers who were sick-listed due to low back pain. In 2003 he obtained his PhD-degree with a thesis entitled: ‘low back pain, graded activity and return to work’. Besides his research activities, he also attended statistical and methodological courses organized by the Postgraduate Epidemiology Programme of the EMGO-Institute, the Netherlands School of Primary Care Research, and the New England Epidemiology Institute in Boston, USA. Subsequently, he started working as a lecturer and senior researcher at the Department of Epidemiology and the Center of Evidence-Based Physiotherapy at Maastricht University. He taught evidence-based medicine, statistics, and implementation research in several bachelor and master courses both to medical and health sciences students. In 2009 he started working as a senior researcher at IQ healthcare (Scientific Institute for Quality of Health Care) of the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen and his research themes include musculoskeletal disorders, guideline development, cardiac rehabilitation, cancer rehabilitation, sports injuries, and physiotherapy in general. Since 2015 he works as a professor of Key factors in Physiotherapy and Allied health care at the HAN University of Applied Sciences while still being affiliated with the Radboudumc as a senior researcher. His current research activities are mainly focused on musculoskeletal disorders and the effects of exercise and communication between healthcare providers and patients.