Anesthesiology has been undergoing major changes globally, expanding roles beyond the operating room in offering high quality personalized services in peri-operative health, pain management, critical care and other medical disciplines. Research has been a major factor underlining these changes and will continue to be an essential force driving the evolution of the specialty.

Stanford Anesthesia research includes a wide spectrum of programs in basic, translational, clinical, health service, and medical education areas. Project fields range from subcellular mechanisms of anesthesia, pain, and opioid addiction, tissue/organ injury, novel anesthesia agents, techniques and devices, treatment effectiveness, epidemiology, patient safety, health economics and other areas. Interdisciplinary collaborations are increasingly a feature. Our department has been among the top five NIH funded anesthesia departments since 2011, with current external research grants and contracts totaling $17 million annually.

Stanford Anesthesia pays special attention to research training for the next generation of anesthesiologists and has established a research-training continuum bridging between medical student and faculty stages. We place special emphasis on supporting the residency-fellowship-junior faculty period. A key part of this support is the Fellowship in Anesthesia Research and Medicine (FARM) program and our two NIH supported T32 training grants.