Cara L. McDermott
Cara L. McDermott

Cara L. McDermott

Assistant Professor in Medicine

Overview

Dr. Cara McDermott is an Assistant Professor in Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, at Duke University School of Medicine. She has a K23 award from NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute on deprescribing fall-risk increasing drugs among multimorbid adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Her research focuses on identifying gaps in healthcare delivery and using implementation science to adapt and assess evidence-based interventions. Dr. McDermott works to optimize medication use, improve symptom management, and reduce unwanted healthcare use among older adults with multiple chronic conditions, with a particular interest in improving outcomes for patients with cancer, COPD, or dementia and their caregivers.  She is particularly interested in improving shared decision making in this population and medication deprescribing for adults with serious illness. In recent projects, she investigated ways to improve end-of-life care from the perspective of bereaved caregivers and care delivery gaps leading to unwanted healthcare utilization at end of life for patients with multimorbidity. She completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship with the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at the University of Washington and a K12 with the University of Washington’s Implementation Sciences Training Program.

Positions

Assistant Professor in Medicine in the School of Medicine

2022 School of Medicine

Assistant Professor in Population Health Sciences in the School of Medicine

2022 School of Medicine

Member of the Duke Cancer Institute in the School of Medicine

2025 School of Medicine

Education

Ph.D. 2016

2016 University of Washington

Postdoctoral Fellow, CAMBIA PALLIATIVE CARE CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE

2018 University of Washington, School of Medicine

Publications, Grants & Awards