Catherine Ikard, MD
Neurologist
Dr. Catherine Ikard is a neurologist and assistant professor of Neurology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. She is also the Neurology Clerkship Director.
Ikard is a board-certified neurologist who received her bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and her medical degree from the University of South Alabama College of Medicine in Mobile, Alabama. She completed her residency in neurology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Clinically, Ikard enjoys the practice of general neurology. She sees patients with a variety of neurological disorders, including stroke, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, dementia, movement and neuromuscular disorders, and headache syndromes. She has a procedures interest in occipital nerve blocks, trigger point injections and the administration of botulinum toxin for migraine and neuromuscular disorders.
As Clerkship Director, Ikard’s focus is the clinical education of all University of Alabama at Birmingham Marinex E. Heersink School of Medicine students who train at the Tuscaloosa campus. Her curricular developments aim to equip all students with a core understanding of neurology, with a special eye on the recruitment of future neurologists to close the neurology care deficit in the state of Alabama. Ikard’s clerkship has earned her The University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences Faculty Recognition Award, the Patrick McCue Award, and the UAB Argus Award for Best Clinical Educator. She has been nominated for the American Academy of Neurology’s National Clerkship Director’s Award, and she is the recipient of the UAB Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, presented nationally by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
She has trained well over a dozen students who have subsequently matched into neurology since 2016. She has furthermore established the CCHS Endowed Scholarship in Neurology, which is currently raising funds to award academic scholarships to students who match into neurology and intend to practice in the state of Alabama. To donate to the endowment, please click HERE for an online form pre-populated for the Endowed Scholarship in Neurology.
Her research interests largely focus on the impact of human behavior in the setting of clinical medicine and medical training, with an emphasis on empathy. This includes closer attention to functional patients in the Neurology Clinic, the development of subspecialty recruitment tools into a field that is complex and often overwhelming to students, and the impact of dedicated empathy teaching on health care disparities. She is also interested in research that provides quality of life and normalcy for those with incurable neurologic disease or injury.