Interdisciplinary collaboration in anaesthesia research

L. G. Kevin1 and A. J. Cunningham2

1 Milwaukee, WI, USA 2 Dublin, Ireland

Editor—Interdisciplinary collaboration is an important aspect of contemporary academic medicine. It is recognized as essential to allow translation of advances made in the laboratory to advances in clinical practice.1 2 The extent to which researchers are collaborating with experts outside their field is a key indicator of research practice patterns, and may have implications for the likely impact of such research within the parent specialty and in other fields of medicine. We noticed that there is no information concerning the nature or extent of collaboration occurring in anaesthesia research, the manner in which this may have changed during the recent evolution of our specialty, or the differences that exist between countries. We therefore performed a manual survey of papers describing original research, published in four major English-language anaesthesia journals by sampling one year from each of the past five decades.

Journals surveyed were Anaesthesia, Anesthesia and Analgesia, Anesthesiology and the British Journal of Anaesthesia; 3001 articles were included. We found that the number of authors per paper, the number of countries represented and the proportion of studies which are multicentre and international have increased progressively during the past 50 yr (P<0.05, Chi-square test for trend) (Table 1). There have been steady increases in the proportion of papers that are the product of collaboration with clinical and non-clinical specialists from disciplines other than anaesthesia, and in the variety of such disciplines. The two countries with the greatest share of publications, the US and the UK, differ greatly in their collaborative practices. In the year 2000, 49.2% of US papers involved collaboration of two or more disciplines, whereas 30.4% of UK papers involved multidisciplinary collaboration. Our data may understate this difference as many US investigators hold joint appointments with basic science departments but for the purpose of this analysis they were considered to be anaesthetists only. Among the five countries publishing the most papers in 2000 (USA, UK, Japan, Germany and France), there were no differences in the tendency to collaborate between clinical and non-clinical disciplines (data not shown). Overall a trend was evident; whereas in 1950 research papers published by a sole author were common, in subsequent decades these became increasingly rare. Collaboration with additional anaesthetists from within the same centre increased, followed by collaboration with anaesthetists from other centres and from other countries, and collaboration with specialists from other medical and scientific disciplines. The year 2000 was the first year of those surveyed in which specialists from outside medicine and science were represented (e.g. economics, business administration).


View this table:
[in this window]
[in a new window]
 
Table 1 Survey results. Note: Multicentre excludes international studies. *Excludes Anesthesia & Analgesia (in 1990 professional disciplines of authors were inconsistently stated)
 
The influence of multi-disciplinary involvement in anaesthesia research cannot be measured by a survey of this kind although we submit that this increase represents a healthy trend for the specialty. A positive impact of multi-disciplinary collaboration in research has been demonstrated in primary care.3 Academic emergency medicine physicians have produced a consensus statement on research collaboration which includes recommendations on how this may be fostered within and particularly outside their specialty.4 The last 20 yr have been notable for landmark advances in several biological sciences including molecular biology and genetics. To harness these developments for the advance of anaesthesia, it will be necessary to establish and maintain collaborative networks with experts in these fields.2 Several factors tend to hamper this, however, including: the structural organization of academic medical institutions;2 grant application procedures that reward only the principle investigator; difficulties among clinicians and basic scientists in recognizing merit in each others work;5 and potential for disagreements over authorship.6

We limited this survey to four major American and UK anaesthesia journals. It is possible that distinct trends in collaboration may be more demonstrable in subspecialty journals or in basic science journals. The relative contribution of participants within a collaborative network cannot be assessed from the current method of author listing, (although alternative methods have been suggested),6 nor can the impact of these experts on the advance of anaesthesia be quantified. Nevertheless, experts from a burgeoning variety of disciplines have become involved in anaesthesia research; it is probable that they have considerably influenced its scope and impact.

L. G. Kevin1

A. J. Cunningham2

1Milwaukee, WI, USA

2Dublin, Ireland

References

1 Stein EK, Jessop DJ. Thoughts on interdisciplinary research (editorial). J Clin Epidemiol 1988; 41: 813–5[ISI][Medline]

2 Pober JS, Neuhauser CS, Pober JM. Obstacles facing translational research in academic medical centres. FASEB J 2001; 15: 2303–13[Abstract/Free Full Text]

3 Scherger JE, Rucker L, Morrison EH, Cygan RW, Hubbell FA. The primary care specialists working together: a model of success in an academic environment. Acad Med 2000; 75: 693–8[Abstract/Free Full Text]

4 Lewis LM, Callaham ML, Kellermann AL, Marx, JA, White DJ. Collaboration in emergency medicine research: a consensus statement. Acad Emerg Med 1998; 5: 152–6[Abstract]

5 Freireic EJ. Who took the clinical out of clinical research? Mouse versus man. Clin Cancer Res 1997; 3: 2711–22[ISI][Medline]

6 Smith R. Authorship: time for a paradigm shift? BMJ 1997; 314: 992[Free Full Text]





This Article
Full Text (PDF)
E-Letters: Submit a response to the article
Alert me when this article is cited
Alert me when E-letters are posted
Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Email this article to a friend
Similar articles in this journal
Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Similar articles in PubMed
Alert me to new issues of the journal
Add to My Personal Archive
Download to citation manager
Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (1)
Disclaimer
Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Articles by Kevin, L. G.
Articles by Cunningham, A. J.
PubMed
PubMed Citation
Articles by Kevin, L. G.
Articles by Cunningham, A. J.