Research & Scholarship

Advancing the Science of Emergency Medicine

The Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine is committed to advancing the science of emergency medicine through rigorous, collaborative, and clinically meaningful scholarship.

As a newer academic department, we have an extraordinary opportunity to build a research enterprise designed specifically around the questions that matter most in emergency care: How can we deliver better care? How can we make emergency care more effective, efficient, and accessible? How can we improve outcomes for patients and communities? And how can we translate what we learn into meaningful change at the bedside and across health systems?

Our scholarship mission is an essential component of the Department's tripartite mission of clinical care, education, and research. The department was established with a specific mandate to strengthen emergency care in Oklahoma while contributing to the research mission of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences.

We envision a nationally recognized program of emergency medicine scholarship that brings together physicians, PhD scientists, educators, health services researchers, data scientists, statisticians, trainees, and clinical partners to address important questions in emergency care.

Our goal is not simply to produce publications. Our goal is to generate knowledge that changes emergency medicine.

We will develop a collaborative research environment in which ideas originating from the clinical environment can be transformed into rigorous research questions, studied using contemporary scientific methods, and translated back into clinical practice.

A defining priority of the Department of Emergency Medicine will be the recruitment of PhD-trained research faculty who will work alongside physician-scientists and clinically focused faculty.

This interdisciplinary model will provide the scientific expertise necessary to develop a sophisticated research program while creating opportunities for emergency physicians and researchers to pursue questions together.

Our research faculty will bring expertise in areas such as:

• Epidemiology and population health
• Biostatistics and quantitative methods
• Health services and health policy research
• Implementation science
• Clinical research methodology
• Medical education research
• Data science and informatics
• Quality improvement and patient safety
• Clinical operations and workflow science

Recruiting PhD scientists into the Department will be an important investment in our long-term academic mission. These investigators will serve not only as independent researchers, but also as methodology partners, mentors, collaborators, and teachers for the entire department.

The broader OU College of Medicine is making strategic investments in research infrastructure and scientific talent, creating an environment in which the Department of Emergency Medicine can build interdisciplinary collaborations across the Health Campus.

Research will not be confined to a small group of investigators.

We intend to create a culture in which every faculty member and learner can participate in scholarship.

Medical students, residents, fellows, advanced practice providers, nurses, clinical staff, and faculty will be encouraged to identify questions arising from clinical practice and work with experienced investigators to develop those questions into meaningful scholarly projects.

Faculty mentors will provide guidance in research design, methodology, data analysis, scientific writing, presentation, and dissemination.

Our goal is to develop clinicians who are not only consumers of scientific evidence, but contributors to the science of emergency medicine.

The most important questions in emergency medicine rarely belong to a single discipline.

Our research strategy will therefore emphasize collaboration across the University of Oklahoma and OU Health.

The OU Health Sciences Campus provides an unusual opportunity for this type of interdisciplinary collaboration, with multiple health professions and research disciplines located within a single academic environment. The College of Medicine has identified interdisciplinary research and recruitment of scientific talent as important components of its broader research strategy.

We will measure the success of our scholarship mission not simply by the number of publications produced, but by the impact of our scholarship.

Success will include:

• Recruitment and retention of outstanding research faculty
• Development of independent research programs
• Extramural research funding
• High-quality peer-reviewed publications
• National and international presentations
• Successful research collaborations
• Meaningful participation by learners
• Development of future physician-scientists
• Improvements in clinical practice
• Improvements in patient outcomes
• Implementation of evidence into emergency care
• Contributions to the health of Oklahoma communities