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The stakes are high for our patients, hospitals and the health system Research provides the foundation for everything we do in medicine. Bedside clinical research, where patients are prospectively enrolled in studies, including those that compare diagnostic and/or therapeutic strategies, is particularly important for guiding clinical management. Large multicentre clinical trials are the most important way to obtain robust, generalisable results to guide our decision-making processes. Well-designed trials not only improve patient outcomes, but save money, too. This is particularly so when trials are collaborative, publicly funded and not subject to commercial interference. Whether emergency physicians embrace bedside clinical research as a professional group will determine whether we continue our development as a strong clinical specialty, or become a rapid triage service following the agendas of other specialty groups, or simplistic time-based targets. This is not about ‘protecting turf’, but rather it is of critical importance for our patients. Specialist groups tend to design studies to further their own interests, and their interpretation of data can be subject to strong biases. As one commentator has observed, there are good reasons to beware of these ‘single issue fanatics’.2 Of course, we ourselves are not immune to such bias. One solution is to foster strong interdisciplinary research collaborations that include a range of clinical perspectives, including those of our patients and their carers. Studies can then be designed from the beginning to answer the right questions. However, real collaborations are built from the ground up, not superimposed from above. We need to establish an environment that encourages collaborative research and puts clinicians and their patients in the driving seat.