Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. (NDORMS)
The Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences is the academic department of Orthopaedic Surgery for the University of Oxford within the Medical Services Division. The department is a rapidly growing community of orthopaedic surgeons, other clinicians, and scientists, all working in the field of musculoskeletal disorders.
The research arm of the department is largely housed in the Botnar Research Centre on the Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital site. Being situated on the grounds of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre puts the Botnar in a unique position with basic researchers working alongside clinicians. This substantially improves the research capacity of the centre, improving researchers access to patients, and facilitating the interaction between clinicians and basic scientists that is essential for successful medical research.
The teaching, clinical trials and administration of the department are housed in the new Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre hospital buildings. In recent years departmental researchers have been involved in trials across a variety of musculoskeletal conditions, including osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and other bone diseases, inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis, and various orthopaedic surgical interventions.
Orthopaedics was recognised as an academic discipline at the University of Oxford when Gaythorne Girdlestone, a prominent member of the NOC (known then as the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital) was appointed as the first Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedics in 1937.