Rate My Professor Alastair Hepburn

Alastair Hepburn serves as Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Urology section of the Department of Surgery and Critical Care (Dunedin) within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago. He earned his MBChB from the University of Otago in 2000 and obtained FRACS in Urology in 2014. As a consultant urologist, he practices at Dunedin Public Hospital and serves as a visiting consultant at Mercy Hospital Dunedin. Hepburn holds the position of Training Supervisor for Urology at Southern District Health Board and is a member of the Training and Education Board for the New Zealand section of Urological Surgeons of Australia and New Zealand. Raised and schooled in Cromwell, Central Otago, he spent summers picking fruit and later served as a private in the New Zealand Army infantry while playing rugby for Southern. After completing his medical degree, he worked several years in the United Kingdom as a Forensic Physician for the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. He then pursued formal surgical and urological training in New Zealand locations including Otago, Auckland, and Tauranga, followed by fellowships in Urological Oncology and Transplant Urology in Sydney, Australia, before returning to Dunedin.

Hepburn maintains a broad urology practice with sub-specialty interests in uro-oncology, endourology, and prosthetic urology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, a member of the Urological Society of Australasia, and the Société Internationale d'Urologie. His research includes co-authorship on the 2022 publication 'The role of intra-operative void score during transurethral resection of prostate as a marker of efficacy: a feasibility study' in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery. He received acknowledgment for contributions to a 2024 study on genome-scale DNA methylome and transcriptome analyses in prostate cancer. Hepburn has also contributed to public education through presentations, such as at the Developments and Treatments in Prostate Cancer forum in Dunedin in 2020.