Rate My Professor Debra McNamara

Debra McNamara is a Research Nurse at the Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago. Her professional focus is in clinical research, particularly within rheumatology and neurology. She has been engaged in research roles at the University of Otago for over twelve years, initially specializing in rheumatology before transitioning to the neurology research team in 2017.

In her current position, McNamara plays a pivotal role in the Dunedin Dementia Prevention Research Clinic as part of the Aotearoa Brain Project. She coordinates the daily operations of the clinic, including participant recruitment, scheduling appointments, providing information to participants and their families about the study's objectives, collecting clinical data and blood samples, managing the participant database, and handling communications. Her research summary is listed as Rheumatology.

McNamara has made significant contributions to several clinical research studies, often involved in participant recruitment, assessment, and data management. She is a co-author on key publications, including Abbott et al. (2019) on the 2-year results of the MOA randomised controlled trial evaluating supervised physiotherapy for osteoarthritis of the hip or knee in Osteoarthritis & Cartilage; Hunt, McNamara, and Stebbings (2016) on an open-label six-month extension study of Artemisia annua extract for osteoarthritis in the New Zealand Medical Journal; Stebbings, Beattie, McNamara, and Hunt (2016) on a pilot randomized placebo-controlled trial of Artemisia annua extract for osteoarthritis in Clinical Rheumatology; a 2015 verbal presentation on the Artemisia annua pilot trial at the New Zealand Rheumatology Association Annual Scientific Meeting; and Treharne et al. (2009) abstract on rheumatoid arthritis in Physical Therapy Reviews. Through these efforts, she has supported investigations into pain management, stiffness, functional limitation in osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, and dementia prevention.