New grant strengthens research culture in emergency medicine
‘I've worked in research in emergency medicine for a long time and I know how hard it is to get research programs started and to get a grant to get meaningful research done,’ FACEM Professor Anne-Maree Kelly said.
That experience and insight was the motivation for a new research grant launching in February 2025.
The ACEM Foundation Kelly Research Grant was established following a generous donation to the Foundation by Anne-Maree and her partner Colin Yates.
Conversations the couple had about her pathway toward retirement led to one particularly focused discussion about ways to make a sustainable difference.
‘With the encouragement of a friend who was there with us at the time, Colin said, “Well, why don't we think about doing something to encourage the next generation?”.
‘We worked with the College to develop a model, and I'm really excited about it actually coming to fruition.’
“‘I think accessing research grants is harder in emergency medicine because it’s still developing, but has not yet fully developed, a research culture.’”
Anne-Maree said that her partner, a human research ethicist, ‘also understands about research and how challenging it can be to get quality research off the ground’.
‘But with a little bit of a start, some really meaningful, effective and impactful research can happen.’
FACEM Professor Anne-Maree Kelly believes the best way to understand conditions and improve relevant treatments is to ask good quality questions and respond with good quality answers.
Nurturing a research culture in emergency medicine
Anne-Maree experienced the unique challenges associated with emergency medicine research since first becoming involved with research when she was a registrar in training.
‘I used to feel frustrated that there wasn't research out there for some of the things that we're being recommended to do. And one day, a rep came to the hospital and was trying to sell a piece of equipment called a transcutaneous carbon dioxide monitor.’
She said that his sales pitch to her involved ‘telling me and my boss at the time that this piece of equipment was better than sliced bread’.
‘We actually came up with a plan for him to leave it with us so that we could test and see whether or not it actually worked in our environment,’ Anne-Maree said. ‘We did a small study with no funding and just a loaned machine – and that was the start of it.’
Anne-Maree said that her personal experience has taught her ‘that the best way to understand conditions and treatments and to improve them is to ask good quality questions and to answer them with good quality answers – in other words, research’.
‘I think accessing research grants is harder in emergency medicine because it’s still developing, but has not yet fully developed, a research culture.’
Anne-Maree said another challenge was ‘a perception, which I don't think is correct, that you need a lot of money to do research’.
“‘This new ACEM Foundation Kelly Research Grant is another way to help people get a start in the field of research.’”
With available research grant funding typically concentrated in bigger centres, Anne-Maree said another issue emergency physicians and would-be researchers face is that questions relevant to regional, rural and remote centres are ‘harder to answer’.
‘Granting bodies are not really set up to explore questions in the same way emergency medicine is,’ she said. ‘A lot of doctors deal with people with narrowly defined conditions such as heart attacks or asthma. We deal with people with symptoms like shortness of breath or headache – and a lot of granting bodies can't really seem to get their head around that.’
Anne-Maree said the resource-intensive process of writing grants can also be a barrier for emergency medicine professionals.
‘You need to have very significant infrastructure to even complete a competitive grant application, so it can feel really hard, and the barriers are structural, cultural and financial.
‘But that doesn't mean that, with just a little bit of money, research can't get off the ground and can be scalable and impactful.’
Strengthening the research grant landscape
Anne-Maree sees the launch of this new grant as enhancing ACEM’s existing grants supporting research in emergency medicine.
‘This new ACEM Foundation Kelly Research Grant is another way to help people get a start in the field of research,’ she said. ‘For groups that might otherwise have a real struggle to get research funding, such as researchers wanting to investigate vulnerable groups including refugees, prisoners and the Indigenous population, we hope this can help open a door.’
Early and mid-career researchers are encouraged to apply.
‘It's not designed for people who have already got lots of research output and lots of infrastructure around them,’ Anne-Maree said. ‘This is to help newer people build research capacity.’
Anne-Maree said both patients and doctors can benefit from supporting capacity-building growth for emergency physicians.
“‘You need attention to detail to do it in a way that is scientifically valid, but you also need an open mind.’”
She said that one grant is on offer for the launch in February 2025, but added ‘it is designed to be the start of a potentially bigger program’.
‘It's intended to be annually initially. We're hoping there's a lot of interest and people applying with some innovative and exciting new ideas, rather than some of the more traditional approaches.’
Curiosity and clear communication
What makes a good researcher?
‘You need curiosity’, Anne-Maree said. ‘You need to want to really understand things and to want to challenge the status quo. You need attention to detail to do it in a way that is scientifically valid, but you also need an open mind.
‘It’s no good doing research where you think you already know the answer and you design your research to get that answer you want. You must be open to whatever the answer is.’
She said researchers also need to communicate clearly and succinctly, ‘and in a way that engages people’.
Throughout her own career, she said she had ‘been lucky enough to have the generosity of so many of my colleagues to support me undertaking research’, with access to ‘great mentors, including FACEM Associate Professor Joseph Epstein’, who inspired her to push boundaries and seek answers.
‘I had dabbled a little in research before he mentored me – and maybe the window to that research world was just half-open,’ Anne-Maree said.
‘He was really good at just getting me to go for it and giving me advice – and now I'm excited about the potential to encourage that in others.’
The ACEM Foundation Kelly Research Grant opens for applications in February 2025.
