American College of Emergency Physicians
RSI Chapter Update - January 2026
In this issue:
- From the Chair
- Letter from the Editor
- ACEP Primer e-Books: What They Are and How to Use Them
- Collaboration Goals for 2026
- How to Contribute (Newsletter and Collaboration)
From the Chair
Hao Wang, MD, PhD, FACEP
Dear RSI Section Members,
It is an honor to serve as Chair of the RSI Section this term. I’m grateful for your trust, and I’m committed to working with you to strengthen our community, deepen collaboration, and advance research and innovation in Emergency Medicine. Your participation is what makes this section thrive, and I hope you’ll stay engaged in the year ahead.
Our section business meeting was held in person at ACEP25 on September 8, 2025, and it was encouraging to see increased attendance, especially from residents and students. Thank you to Dr. Kraus for the board update and Dr. Kemmler for the council update. Dr. James Paxton, Nominating Committee Chair and our Immediate Past President, led the nominations from the floor. We elected Dr. Carol Clark as Chair-Elect, Dr. Dana Mathew as Secretary and Newsletter Editor, Dr. Joshua Davis as Councillor, and Dr. Keith Alangaden as Alternate Councillor.
I also want to recognize the success of the ACEP 2025 Research Forum, as shared by our ACEP staff liaison, Marla Payne. The forum received 854 abstracts, the third-highest total on record, which reflects the energy and momentum of our research community.
In the year ahead, we will continue the research fellowship survey project to understand graduates’ career trajectories better and highlight the value of research fellowships in Emergency Medicine. We will initiate a new ACEP primer e-book series led by Dr. James Paxton. We will also prioritize building connections across faculty, residents, and students, and recognizing outstanding contributions across our section. Thank you for everything you do for RSI. I’m excited about what we can accomplish together.
With gratitude,
Hao Wang, MD, PhD
, Chair, ACEP RSI Section (2025-2026)
Dear RSI Section Members,
Welcome to the 2026 RSI Section newsletter. Our aim this year is simple: make it easier for members to do practical scholarship—whether that’s clinical research, education research, QI/implementation work, or responsible innovation that can actually be evaluated and scaled.
This issue focuses on the ACEP primer e-book resources and on RSI’s renewed push to build a more functional collaboration pipeline. If you have a publication, grant, project update, or a work-in-progress that would benefit from collaborators, please send it to Dr. Wang, Marla Payne, or me for inclusion in upcoming newsletters.
Sincerely,
Dana Mathew, MD, FACEP
RSI Section Secretary & Newsletter Editor
ACEP Primer e-Books: What They Are and How to Use Them
The ACEP Primer e-books are short, practical guides built to help emergency physicians and educators do scholarship efficiently and correctly. They’re not position statements, and they’re not meant to be exhaustive textbooks. They’re designed as “working manuals” you can use to:
- turn a good idea into a feasible project,
- build repeatable processes (especially for residency/faculty scholarly activity),
- avoid common IRB/regulatory pitfalls,
- standardize how programs teach and execute research methods, journal club, and related scholarship.
In practice, the primers are most useful when you treat them like playbooks: pick the primer that matches your immediate problem (starting a study, building a resident scholarly activity pipeline, navigating EFIC, optimizing journal club), then apply the recommended structure and checklists to reduce friction and rework.
ACEP Research hub—main landing page for primer access:
https://www.acep.org/topics/research
Emergency Care Research: A Primer (Book 1)
A broad foundation and roadmap for moving from question → study plan → dissemination.
https://www.acep.org/redirects/acep-research-primer---book-1
Resident Research & Scholarly Activity: A Primer (Book 2)
Focused on building a sustainable scholarly activity program (structure, workflow, feasibility).
https://www.acep.org/redirects/resident-research-and-scholarly-activity---a-primer
EFIC and WIC Studies: A Primer for Clinical Investigators
Operational guidance for EFIC/WIC emergency research (IRB/regulatory realities, execution considerations).
https://www.acep.org/siteassets/sites/rsai-section/media/documents/efic_primer_2024.pdf
Emergency Medicine Journal Club Primer (in progress)
A practical framework for running a high-functioning EM journal club; see page for current updates and revisions.
https://www.acep.org/rsai/newsroom/mar2024/acep-journal-club-primer
Get involved
If you’re interested in contributing to primer development (authoring, reviewing, or editorial support), contact James Paxton: James.Paxton@wayne.edu.
Collaboration Goals for 2026
RSI is shifting toward a more deliberate collaboration workflow. The problem is not a lack of ideas—the problem is that ideas don’t reliably become executable projects without structure. The 2026 plan is to build that structure.
You should expect RSI to emphasize recurring, project-focused discussions in which one study concept at a time is pressure-tested for feasibility: the question, outcomes, core variables, minimum viable dataset, analysis plan, and what it would take to run it across sites. This approach is meant to produce more successful studies.
On the data side, we are also being explicit about realistic pathways. De-identified, large-scale platforms (where available through institutions) may offer a practical route to multi-site analysis without the overhead of traditional data-sharing. In section discussions, examples raised included Epic Cosmos (institution-dependent), and ACEP resources such as EMDI and Open Book (useful for specific questions, though not a substitute for patient-level datasets). The goal is to establish a repeatable process for matching a good question to an achievable data strategy.
How to Contribute (Newsletter and Collaboration)
If you want RSI to be more useful, the highest-impact contributions are short and concrete: a primer implementation tip that saved time, a project that needs collaborators, a dataset you’ve successfully used, or a “what we wish we knew” paragraph about IRB, data extraction, or dissemination.
