Professor Margaret O’Connor has served as a Consultant in Geriatric and General Internal Medicine in the UL Hospitals Group (ULHG) since 2010 and is an adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine, UL. She graduated from TCD in 2000 as Trinity Scholar and completed postgraduate training in Ireland and King’s College London before returning to the ULHG as a consultant with Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (FRCPI) status awarded in 2012. She is currently the Mid-West Intern Coordinator Medicine, co-chair of the national Intern Network Executive, board member on the Institute of Medicine RCPI and leading out through RCPI on an Irish Clinician Educator Programme, which received development funding from NDTP.  

Professor O’Connor has served as an accreditor with the Irish Medical Council (participating in professional training body accreditation), as RCPI Regional Specialty Director for Geriatric Medicine Specialist Registrar Training (2013–2019) and as ULHG Clinical Director and Associate Clinical Director in Medicine. She is a member of the Irish National Audit of Stroke Governance Committee, Clinical Advisory Group for Stroke and Joint Stroke lead for ULHG.  

Professor O'Connor has developed an interdisciplinary research collaboration through the Ageing Research Centre, HRI; she has collaborated on clinical trials including OPTIMEND (NCT03739515), SOLAR (NCT04629690) and SOLAR PLus and has received support for her role as ULHG PI for the Stroke CONVINCE and AVERT trials. She is an active supervisor and mentor for doctors undertaking PhD and master’s degrees through UL. Research interests include integrated care for older people, frailty, stroke, autonomic function, delirium and medical education. 

Publications

  1. Shanahan, E., Ryan, S., Leahy, A., Sheehy, T., Costelloe, A., Roy, A., Galvin, R., Peters, C., Lyons, D., & O'Connor, M. (2021). Delirium and abnormal autonomic nervous system response to head-up tilt testing. Experimental gerontology, 152, 111430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2021.111430 

  1. Tieges, Z., Maclullich, A. M. J., Anand, A., Brookes, C., Cassarino, M., O’Connor, M., Ryan, D., Saller, T., Arora, R. C., Chang, Y., Agarwal, K., Taffet, G., Quinn, T., Shenkin, S. D., & Galvin, R. (2021). Diagnostic accuracy of the 4AT for delirium detection in older adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. Age and Ageing, 50(3), 733–743. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaa224 

  1. Griffin, E., Murphy, S., Sheehan, M., Power, S., Brennan, P., O'Hare, A., Looby, S., Mcwilliams, S., Moynihan, B., Williams, D., Boyle, K., O'Neill, D., Collins, R., Dolan, E., Cassidy, T., Harbison, J., O'Connor, M., Alderson, J., & Thornton, J. (2020). Early repatriation post-thrombectomy: a model of care which maximises the capacity of a stroke network to treat patients with large vessel ischaemic stroke. Journal of Neurointerventional Surgery, neurintsurg–201. https://doi.org/10.1136/neurintsurg-2019-015667 

  1. Leahy, A., O'Connor, M., Condon, J., Heywood, S., Shanahan, E., Peters, C., & Galvin, R. (2021). Diagnostic and predictive accuracy of the Clinical Frailty Scale among hospitalised older medical patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol. BMJ open, 11(1), e040765. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040765 

  1. Loughlin, E., Gannon, E., Coughlan, A., Cunningham, N., Paulose, S., O'Brien, I., Ryan, R., Leahy, A., Lyons, D., McManus, J., Peters, C., & O'Connor, M. (2021). Audit of inpatient acute stroke services in a university teaching hospital, 2020. Irish journal of medical science, 10.1007/s11845-021-02561-y. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-021-02561-y