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Many emergency medicine clinicians engaged in research may not be aware of some fundamental principles of conducting and disseminating medical research. Ignorance of these fundamentals can lead to investigator frustration, disorganized researcher efforts, and ultimately a reduction in the emergency care researcher pool. Conversely, an increasingly large pool of trained investigators has focused their efforts toward emergency care research. Giving these investigators an overview of the unique challenges and opportunities in emergency care research could be valuable, if not critical, to their success in investigations. The field of emergency medicine now has experienced and funded emergency care researchers who can highlight key points to finding mentors, obtaining extramural funding, designing research proposals, initiating research, and disseminating research results. Some of this information has been presented in lectures, discussed at national meetings, printed piecemeal in review articles, and published in lengthy books. However, a pithy, consolidated, and accessible guide focused on the junior, novice, or evolving emergency care investigator has not been available. The American College of Emergency Physicians’ (ACEP) Emergency Medicine Research Section and Research Committee recognized the need for a short manual to kindle and motivate trainees and novice investigators and to offer an introduction to emergency care research with a hands-on guide to initiating, completing, and disseminating research. The chapters in this manual address what constitutes emergency care research, how to identify a research topic and find a mentor, how to address key issues in emergency care research, training in research, the basics of grant writing, the presentation of research results, getting published, the top commandments of emergency care research, and how to start a research career. We hope that this primer serves as a resource for everyone engaged in emergency medicine to both motivate and encourage investigators to pursue emergency care research. Vikhyat (Vik) Bebarta, MD, FACEP Charles (Chuck) Cairns, MD, FACEP Co-editor Co-editor VI EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH – A PRIMER CHAPTER 1 — WHAT IS ACUTE AND EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH? 1 EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH – A PRIMER WHAT IS ACUTE AND EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH? Charles B. Cairns, MD, FACEP OVERVIEW OF EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH Emergency medicine evolved as a medical specialty from a convergence of events stemming from transformations in hospital systems and changing societal perceptions of access to medical care. Increasing patient loads in hospitals resulted in a need for dedicated staffing of emergency departments (EDs). In addition, lessons from combat had highlighted the importance of timely management of traumatic wounds and the potential for out-ofhospital care (1). The integration of these care systems and the development of resuscitation medicine lead to a remarkably expansive specialty that now delivers care to over 120 million patients annually in the nation’s EDs and has resulted in the training and board certification of over 20,000 emergency physician specialists (2). As the specialty grew rapidly, questions arose about the future of emergency medicine research. The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation convened a meeting to investigate the role of emergency medicine in the future of American medical care (1). The participants at this and subsequent follow-up conferences (1, 2, 6, 8, 9) noted several unique factors to emergency medicine and emergency medicine research: • Emergency medical care is the only medical care resource that offers both immediacy of care and universality of service. • Emergency medicine encompasses and interacts with all medical specialties. • Emergency departments are literally the front door for the sickest and worst injured in America. • The import of immediacy of care has been proven time and again by research performed in the ED setting, including the very time sensitive treatments of heart attacks, stroke, shock states, pneumonia, respiratory illness, and trauma. • Emergency departments function as a safety net for our health care and social systems and are the only institutional providers mandated by federal law to treat anyone who presents for care. CHAPTER 1 2 CHAPTER 1 — WHAT IS ACUTE AND EMERGENCY CARE RESEARCH? • Emergency medicine encompasses all patient populations, traverses all geographies, and interacts with every culture, race, creed, and socioeconomic class. • Emergency physicians have become experts in rapid risk stratification and diagnoses. • The science of short-term risk stratification, often on undifferentiated conditions with inadequate historical data, has been necessarily one of the main focuses of emergency medicine research. • The rapid and accurate diagnosis of potentially life-threatening conditions is another nucleus of emergency medicine research and is the arena in which many new technologies are first studied. • Research into and 

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