Anne Nafziger, MD, PhD - Principal Investigator Spotlight

Transcript

I’m Anne Nafziger. I’m medical director at the Albany. IMA Clinical Research site and I’m a principal investigator and sub investigator at this site.

How Did You Get Into Clinical Research?

I was asked to participate in clinical research when I was an internal medicine resident, and I liked learning about new medications, new technologies, innovations, as well as current guidelines and evidence based medicine. Probably in the broadest sense. And I really enjoyed the more relaxed, personal patient subject interactions that I had.

Building Trust in Your Community

I think that you establish credibility and trust by meeting with people, listening to them, inviting them to ask questions, and then being open to any questions that they ask. I think that empathy builds trust, and then trust is the basis of credibility.

How Research Can Positively Impact Patients

I’ve been involved in blood pressure medicine studies and I think thousands of patients have benefited from what we learned in those studies. We, meaning the subjects as well as the investigators were able to assist in having those new medications available for patients.

And besides the broader benefits, I think my individual patients have benefited from my enhanced knowledge about specific medications, their their benefits, how to use them, what the side effects are. I think all those things are our reasons that people’s lives are changed, often in small ways. But small changes can be important for the individual.

Emerging Treatments in Research

In terms of developments in emerging treatments in infectious disease, it’s really clear that we need more antibiotics. We need more and more effective antiviral agents, and we continue to see the benefit from vaccine development. And I think there’s going to continue to be a lot of very interesting and important research that continues to come out in this area.

Why IMA Clinical Research?

I started out my career doing clinical research, and so this is coming back to clinical research. And I’m so happy to be at IMA because here I have colleagues that are committed to doing clinical research and they’re committed to doing it right. And when that’s the case, you end up with study subjects who are well cared for and happy, and you end up with sponsors that have the data that they need.