Surgical research and innovation desperately needs support: a reponse to “Toward a new school of surgical research”
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* Michel Carrier

In the last issue of *CJS*, Dr. Vivian McAlister1 suggested that surgical research needs a “New School” of thought and practice to progress. Facing the recent decline in successful grant applications for innovative surgical research, preclinical research from our academic surgical programs tends to disappear.

As usual, there is no simple solution to a difficult problem. There are opportunities, but no shortcuts to resolve this issue. In recent years, many of us have focused on improving the delivery of surgical health care to our patients and to the public while securing our own contracts and revenues from provincial governments. Have we forgotten to nurture clinical research?

It will always be difficult to combine a successful clinical career with competitive research. Grant applications, laboratory experiments, and manuscript preparation and submission combined with on-call schedule, operating time and teaching duties remains a gigantic task. In my mind, it is the responsibility of group practices, hospital services and university departments to promote, train, support, and help those who wish to pursue a career of research and innovation in the field of surgery. There are so many unanswered questions that it is useless to list them; the real problem remains the source of funding to support research activities, laboratories and even newer technological applications.3 Independent surgical research activities, new technological development and related clinical applications will need to be promoted by health care decision-makers and supported by government agencies. The shortcoming of this will be not only a serious loss in our standing in research and academia at home and abroad, but also a true loss for the Canadian public in general. Surgical research and technological innovation needs support now.4

## Footnotes

*   **Competing interests:** none declared

## References

1.  McAlister V.Toward a New School of surgical research.Can J Surg 2017;60:148
    
    

2.  Harvey E.Surgical innovation is harder than it looks.Can J Surg 2017;60:148
    
    

3.  Fleshner N.We need robots in our operating rooms.Globe and Mail 2017Aug19
    
    

4.  Baron C, Hébert T, Thomas DY.Montreal 400 and Canada 175: Innovation in the future needs support now.The Suburban 2017Aug9