Deirdre O'Neill, MD

Deirdre O'Neill is originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia. She completed her medical school training, internal medicine training and cardiology fellowship at the University of Alberta, where she began to develop an interest in the geriatric population and the personalized approach required to treat these vulnerable patients, in an often research-void area. She also developed an interest in end-of-life care, seeing it as an area where cardiac care could be greatly improved upon. She therefore uprooted her family and moved to Pittsburgh to complete a formal geriatric fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center under the expertise of dual trained cardiologist and geriatrician, Dr Daniel Forman. Deirdre then returned to the University of Alberta Hospital where she is an assistant professor of medicine in the division of cardiology, the course coordinator and head of the cardiology block in year 1 of medical school at the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine, assistant program director to the new palliative medicine residency program, as well as the adult cardiology program, and director of the cardiopulmonary testing laboratory. Her research interests are in frailty and risk stratification of older adults for cardiovascular interventions, as well as quality improvement for older adults admitted to cardiology.