Saint John ER revives research efforts

The Saint John Regional Hospital's emergency room is turning its focus back to health research, only three years after all the department's physicians threatened to quit.

For years, the emergency room at the city's largest hospital had to virtually abandon its research endeavours because there were barely enough doctors to deal with the patients coming through the door.

The Saint John Regional Hospital's ER doctors had threatened to resign due to understaffing and overcrowding.

But now the hospital has six new recruits, including Dr. Paul Atkinson, a new director of emergency medicine research.

Atkinson already has five projects ready to go to the hospital's ethics board for approval and he said he is excited about the possibilities of research projects at the southern New Brunswick hospital.

"Everything we do that's better today than what we did a decade ago is because of research," he said.

New research ideas

Atkinson and his Saint John team want to look for ways to reduce emergency room wait times, research when and how is the best way to treat trauma patients and to see whether offering ultrasounds right in the ER improves patient care.

The physicians also want to study how to avoid emergency room doctor burnout and how to keep doctors up to date on the latest research, such as pain management.

Atkinson said he also hopes to expand to doing laboratory work, including clinical trials of new drugs and treatments.

Most of the studies are pilots that only require local startup funding, but Atkinson said he has high hopes for the future.

"I would foresee that in the next five years Saint John will be on the map of emergency medicine research in Canada again and that we will be taking part in national and international studies," Atkinson said.

The first step for Saint John's research efforts is to collaborate with other hospitals that have been involved in such endeavours for a longer period of time, the hospital's research director said.