Rate My Professor Michael Ardagh

Professor Michael Ardagh serves as Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch, in the Department of Surgery and Critical Care, where he heads the Emergency Medicine section. He is also a specialist and Senior Medical Officer in the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital. Ardagh holds the qualifications ONZM, MB ChB, PhD, DCH (Otago), and FACEM. His PhD, completed at the University of Otago in 2001, is titled 'Preventing harm in resuscitation medicine' and examines decision-making in resuscitation from a bioethics perspective. In his academic role, he convenes the Emergency Medicine teaching thread and the fourth-year undergraduate medical student attachment to surgery. He chairs the Rhise Group, dedicated to researching the health implications of seismic events, and the Emergency Medicine and Nursing Research Group. Furthermore, Ardagh is a trustee of the Emergency Care Foundation, a charitable trust that funds emergency medicine research.

Ardagh's research specializations encompass earthquake injuries and health system responses, emergency department crowding and operational systems, diagnostic decision tools, and the ethics of emergency medicine. His extensive publication record includes over 112 works with more than 3,892 citations. Notable publications feature 'A decade of an online clinical guidance platform for hospital clinicians: they use it, they like it and it makes a difference' in the New Zealand Medical Journal (2026); 'Paediatric presentations to Christchurch Hospital Emergency Department during COVID-19 lockdown' in the Journal of Paediatrics & Child Health (2021); 'Mental health presentations to Christchurch Hospital Emergency Department during COVID-19 lockdown' in Emergency Medicine Australasia (2021); 'Factors influencing casualty risk in the 14th November 2016 MW 7.8 Kaikōura, New Zealand earthquake' in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (2020); and 'A research update on the demography and injury burden of victims of New Zealand earthquakes between 2010 and 2014' in the Australasian Journal of Disaster & Trauma Studies (2020). His contributions have influenced emergency medicine, particularly in disaster response and clinical ethics. Ardagh has received the Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to emergency medicine and the Gold Medal for Teaching from the University of Otago Christchurch campus in 2018.