Emergency care lags behind other fields in the scope and depth of its research enterprise due to a lack of well- trained investigators. To address this, the Department of Emergency Medicine of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai proposes to establish the The Mount Sinai Clinician-Scientist Training Program in Emergency Care Research, to train clinician-scientists in emergency care research. The program will be multidisciplinary, accepting candidates trained in any of the specialties involved in emergency care research including emergency medicine, cardiology, pulmonary, critical care, or trauma surgery. The overall aim of the proposed program is to provide outstanding, research-minded, physicians and other clinicians with a strong foundation in the principles of clinical or health services research and the experiential research opportunities necessary to: a) Pursue independent careers in emergency cardiovascular, pulmonary, hematological or trauma research; b) Become valuable, contributing members of multidisciplinary research teams; and c) Accelerate dissemination of their findings and rapidly translate their research into clinical practice. The Department of Emergency Medicine, currently ranked 4th in the nation in NIH funding, will partner with Conduits - the Mount Sinai CTSA, the Center for Health Equity and Community-Engaged Research, and the Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs/Center of Excellence in Minority Health, as well as colleagues in Medicine, Cardiology, Pulmonary Medicine, Critical Care, Population Health Science & Policy and collaborating research faculty from throughout the institution. The program is led by Lynne D. Richardson MD, Professor and Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine, an experienced investigator and successful mentor. The program will offer two tracks: Clinical Research and Health Services Research. Forty-five faculty members from 15 departments and divisions are committed to serving as research mentors who will provide research opportunities for the Fellows or as methodological and translational advisors. Key components of the program include outstanding multidisciplinary mentorship, individual and collaborative research activities, and formal didactic instruction, and career and leadership development activities. All Fellows will obtain an MS in Clinical Research. Two postdoctoral Fellows will be enrolled per year and will stay for up to three years. The program, the program leadership, the mentors and the Fellows will all be formally evaluated. Building upon an existing outstanding summer research training program, a short term training program to train six underrepresented minority/disadvantaged predoctoral students each summer is also proposed, to increase the diversity of the future emergency care research workforce.
U.S. Emergency Departments had ~130 million visits in 2013, a figure that has been steadily rising for the past fifteen years.1,2,3 25% of the U.S. population visits the ED each year,4 many of whom are the sickest and most vulnerable in the health care system?. Patients who present to the Emergency Department with acute illness often have complex disease processes and high risk of adverse events. There is a specific need for emergency care clinicians to be trained as clinical and health services researchers.
