Rate My Professor Lucy Shieffelbien

Lucy Shieffelbien is the Service Delivery Manager at the National Poisons Centre, situated within the Division of Health Sciences at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Otago and the CF designation. A long-serving staff member since at least the early 2000s, she has progressed through roles including Office Manager, Operations Manager, and now Service Delivery Manager. In this capacity, she oversees the Centre's 24-hour toxicology information service, which handles approximately 25,000 calls annually from healthcare professionals and the public seeking advice on acute poisonings and exposures. The National Poisons Centre, part of the School of Biomedical Sciences, marked 60 years of service in 2025.

Shieffelbien has contributed significantly to the Centre's innovations, including the development of TOXINZ, the toxicology database that received the Supreme Award for Commercialisation from the New Zealand Association for Research in Medicine in 2013 via Otago Innovation Limited. TOXINZ supports emergency management and is used internationally. Her research output includes 12 publications listed on ResearchGate, with 195 citations. Key works feature 'Disposal practices for unused medications in New Zealand' (Environment International, 2009, co-authored with Rhiannon Braund and Barrie M. Peake), which assessed disposal behaviours through a Poisons Centre survey; 'Paediatric poisoning due to nicotine replacement therapy products: An emerging hazard' (Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 2014); 'Elderly people and poisoning in the New Zealand population' (2012); 'Therapeutic errors captured by the New Zealand National Poisons Centre: a retrospective audit' (Journal of Primary Health Care, 2021); 'Enquiries to the New Zealand National Poisons Centre in 2018' (2020); and studies on school-related exposures (2017-2021). Her efforts advance poisoning epidemiology, prevention education, and public health data analysis.