Dr. Barbara St. Marie’s program of research focuses on acute and chronic pain, identifying patients at risk for opioid misuse or opioid use disorder. She works to improve decision support for safe and responsible pain management, and examines pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic interventions to improve safe practice and reduce risk.

Dr. St. Marie is a certified Adult, Gerontology, Primary Care Nurse Practitioner, and is pain management certified through the American Nurses Credentialing Center. As a nurse practitioner for more than 20 years, Dr. St. Marie has worked in pain management, palliative care and hospice, and internal medicine in a primary care setting. She has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and completed postdoctoral studies in pain and associated symptoms at the University of Iowa College of Nursing from 2012-2014. Dr. St. Marie has been editor of the first and second edition of the Core Curriculum for Pain Management Nursing through the American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Since completing her studies and joining the UI faculty, Dr. St. Marie has focused on informing pain management practice across the continuum of care. She has received foundational grants to study patients with pain receiving opioids in a methadone clinic, primary care, advanced practice nurses prescribing opioids for those with chronic pain, and development of a decision support tool for pain management for primary care providers. Dr. St. Marie is now the principal investigator on a study funded through the National Institute on Drug Abuse entitled, Decision Support for Responsible Pain Management. She teaches physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology in the CNL program.

Curriculum Vitae