Emergency Medicine Research Program

Overview

Research has grown tremendously at Northwestern University in Emergency Medicine over the past several years and continues to be an important part of the department's mission. As of this writing in Spring 2009, there have been 11 first authored, peer-reviewed manuscripts published by active members of the faculty, 3 first authored manuscripts by published by residents, and 10 research presentations given by residents or faculty at national meetings. At present, five faculty members are supported in part from research grants.

Our areas of primary focus are:

1. Cardiopulmonary/Cardiovascular Disease
2. Hematological Disease
3. Health Services Research
4. Communication in the Emergency Department
5. Education/Simulation

We currently have grant funding from both federal sources including the NIH and the AHRQ in addition to private soureces from both industry and philanthropy. It is also important to note that in 2008, two residents were awarded highly competitive Emergency Medicine Foundation National Resident Research Grants for projects.

Structure

The structure of the research section is built around individual mentorship teams. These are led by senior investigators, many of whom have advanced degrees with formal research coursework training. They are responsible for the projects under their direction and meet with their teams as needed to accomplish the primary goals of presentation, publication, and grant writing. Collaborative meetings targeted to specific projects or research focus areas occur periodically and may be scheduled through Dr. Courtney who leads the administrative and day-to-day functions of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Personnel

Several researchers in the Northwestern University Department of Emergency Medicine have completed formal coursework in research methodology and they include:

• D. Mark Courtney, MD
• Rahul Khare, MD
• Demetrios Kyriacou, MD, PhD, MPH, DTM&H
• Paula Tanabe, PhD, MPH, RN

Other senior faculty have specific areas of training and expertise. They include:

• Amy Kontrick, MD - education methodology
• John Vozenilek, MD - simulation and education

The Department of Emergency Medicine also has research assistants who work with investigators primarily on funded projects, but may also have effort allocated to mission-critical research activity. This may be in areas such as facilitating promising grant submissions from pilot data or providing meaningful interdepartamental research collaboration with other non-EM investigators.