Emergency Medicine Research Program
The mission of the Northwestern University Emergency Medicine (NU EM) Research Program is to be a leading national academic department that provides patient centered time-dependent acute care in a manner that optimizes efficiency, safety, and outcome.
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. The core research faculty meet monthly to go over current topics and to provide an open forum for faculty to discuss current and upcoming projects and proposals.
Th research faculty are supported by a team of dedicated research administration and research assistant staff. The staff are trained so that each member is able and expected to recruit for all studies. The staff meets every other week to update Dr. Courtney on current issues in enrollment and recieve updated training from NU EM research faculty.
Finally, the NU EM research faculty are supported in grant preperation and post-award services by the Feinberg Research Administrative Services team. This provides another invaluable tool for faculty in the process of submitting grant proposals, and managing grants after they have been awarded.
Research Vision
The NU EM research vision is to create an environment focused in the domains of:
- Health Services Research
- Clinical Care for High Stakes Diagnosis and Therapeutics
- Medical Simulation
Realizing this vision will result in:
- NU EM patients experiencing state of the art timely care that is the benchmark for quality and efficiency
- NU faculty nationally leading efforts to define quality care for predefined content areas
- Residents and junior faculty with promise in investigation experiencing mentored stepwise career development in health services and simulation in acute care content areas.
Funding for our research comes from a variety of sources including federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and friends of emergency medicine. Emergency Medicine also benefits from collaborative relationships with other departments and institutes within the Feinberg School of Medicine. In recent years, our investigators have cultivated particularly strong relationships with Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine, Cardiology, Dermatology and Hematology/Oncology as well as the Institute for Healthcare Studies and the Buehler Center on Aging, Health and Society.
The benchmark for success in realizing this vision over the next 5 years will be a steady and increasing stream of federal funded research dollars supporting simulation, emergency health services research, and time dependant acute clinical care research.
