Kara McLoughlin

Kara McLoughlin is a research fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Limerick and an affiliate PhD scholar of the HRB-TMRN. She graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Occupational Therapy from Teesside University in 2012 and worked in the UK and New Zealand before returning to Ireland in 2016. She has taken an active role in promoting occupational therapy in Ireland and sat on the management team of the Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland.

Both academically and clinically, Kara has played an active role in the emerging area of geriatric emergency medicine. She completed an MSc in Older Persons Rehabilitation at University College Cork, with research exploring emergency medicine clinicians’ understanding and management of frailty, and was involved in setting up a number of Frailty Intervention Therapy Teams around Ireland before taking up her current post in May 2023.

Kara is the principal investigator on CREAT-ED: Development of a Core Outcome Set for research studies with older adults in the Emergency Department. The study aims to develop an evidence- and consensus-based Core Outcome Set (COS) for research with older adults in the Emergency Department (ED), working with a large international steering group of specialists in the care of older adults in the ED, together with Patient and Public Involvement (PPI). CREAT-ED is funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) and runs from 2023 to 2027. Kara is supervised by Prof Katie Robinson and Prof Rose Galvin (University of Limerick) and Dr Elaine Toomey (University of Galway).