David is a Senior Lecturer in the discipline of physiotherapy and Allied Health Research Lead at Peninsula Health. His research interests include: 1) clinical supervision and its effect on patient care and outcomes; 2) allied health assistant models of care; 3) using patient reported outcome measures to inform care delivery; and 4) rehabilitation and community reintegration.

David is internationally-known for his research on allied health clinical supervision and allied health assistant-led rehabilitation. He is ranked #1 worldwide (2020-2024) for publications and citations in the SciVal topics: 1) ‘Nurse; Paramedical Personnel; Job Satisfaction’ and 2) ‘Paramedical Personnel; Occupational Therapy; Assistance Technology’, reflecting his international standing in research on clinical supervision and allied health assistants, respectively. He has 68 peer-reviewed journal publications since 2019 (of 78 career outputs), including 12 published studies on allied health clinical supervision and 7 studies on allied health assistant-led rehabilitation as lead or senior author. He has been awarded $2.3M in funding, including $330K in CIA funding, and was the recipient of a Victorian Medical Research Acceleration Fund Grant (2023) to lead a trial of allied health assistant care of people with multimorbidity in acute hospital, and Australian Physiotherapy Association Grant (2020) to lead a trial of allied health assistant care of people with acute hip fracture.

Findings from David's program of research on effective practice of clinical supervision have been applied in national and international health policy, such as the Department Health and Human Services Victorian Allied Health Clinical Supervision Framework (2019); Canberra Health Services Guideline for Clinical Supervision for Allied Health Clinicians (2021); Ireland Department of Health's Revised Regional Supervision Policy for Allied Health Professionals (2022); and the Ireland Health Service Executive Guide for Clinical Supervision for Nurses Working in Mental Health (2019).

David is currently involved in several research projects, including: trials of allied health assistant-led care in acute hospital settings, trials of educational clinical supervision workshops for allied health professionals, evaluations of clinical supervision in the allied health professions, and studies of patient-reported outcome measures. David has supervised 2 PhD students to completion and currently supervises a further 2 PhD students.