National Institutes of Health support for individual mentored career development grants in emergency medicine.

Abstract

Individual mentored career (K) awards made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are an important way for medical researchers to develop their research skills. This study determined the number of individual mentored (K) awards awarded to emergency medicine (EM) faculty over a 6-year period and compared it with six other specialties. The NIH database of both submitted and funded K01, K08, and K23 applications was queried and crossed with the departmental affiliation of the principal investigator. The results were further analyzed with data from the Association of American Medical Colleges to determine the relationship between the number of awards and the size of the teaching and research faculty. From 2008 to 2013, there were a total of 45 career development submissions from principal investigators affiliated with departments of EM. Of these, 27 (60%) were successful. This success rate is the third lowest of the seven specialties in this analysis. Emergency physicians submit relatively few grants compared to the size of their faculty, and the funding rate, $1,959 per EM resident, was the second lowest of the six specialties examined. Although success rates are reasonable, EM investigators submit very few individual mentored career development applications. They should take greater advantage of this mechanism to further their research training.