Career National Institutes of Health funding and scholarship of chairpersons of academic departments of anesthesiology and surgery.

摘要

THE alarm has been sounded-again. Just as it is widely accepted that research is important for the development, advancement, and future of the medical specialty of anesthesiology, so too is it clear that we have a problem because there are not enough qualified and capable investigators. A recent article in Anesthesiology and an accompanying editorial highlight the sad state of research in our specialty, noting that departments of anesthesiology receive less than 1% of National Institutes of Health (NTH) dollars. This is an amount essentially unchanged from 30 yr ago despite unprecedented recent growth in the NIH budget and increased size of academic departments of anesthesiology in university hospitals. Likewise, over the past few years, there have been numerous forums and articles in newsletters sponsored by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the Association of University Anesthesiologists, and the Foundation for Anesthesia Research and Education lamenting the fact that few trainees and young anesthesiology faculty choose to prepare themselves for a career as physician investigators and that fewer still succeed in procuring and maintaining NIH funding over the long term.5 The reasons for this predicament are undoubtedly quite complicated. Workforce shortages and the economic attraction of private practice probably play a role, as do an increasing clinical workload and generational differences of work ethics and attitudes about lifestyle. However, this is not a new problem. In an editorial written more than 20 yr ago about this issue, a then-leader of our specialty and chairperson of a major academic department, reflecting on missed opportunities for scientific advancement of our specialty, called research in anesthesiology the "road not taken" and stated that "the potential of the trainees is greater than the expectations of the faculty" and that "we must examine ourselves to see if we are willing to take the responsibility for the tremendous intellectual growth that could await our specialty if we have the wisdom to encourage it."