Gender-specific issues in traumatic injury and resuscitation: Consensus-based recommendations for future research

Traumatic injury remains an unacceptably high contributor to morbidity and mortality rates across the United States. Gender-specific research in trauma and emergency resuscitation has become a rising priority. In concert with the 2014 Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference "Gender-specific Research in Emergency Care: Investigate, Understand, and Translate How Gender Affects Patient Outcomes," a consensus-building group consisting of experts in emergency medicine, critical care, traumatology, anesthesiology, and public health convened to generate research recommendations and priority questions to be answered and thus move the field forward. Nominal group technique was used for the consensus-building process and a combination of face-to-face meetings, monthly conference calls, e-mail discussions, and preconference surveys were used to refine the research questions. The resulting research agenda focuses on opportunities to improve patient outcomes by expanding research in sex- and gender-specific emergency care in the field of traumatic injury and resuscitation.