Karsten Bartels, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., Recipient of the 2023 James E. Cottrell, M.D., Presidential Scholar Award

Advancement in the science and safety of anesthesiology, pain medicine, and critical care medicine builds upon the remarkable contributions and unwavering dedication of countless talented physician-scientists traveling a path of discovery that is rarely smooth and even more rarely well defined. Success does not happen by accidental discovery but rather through collaboration, focus, tenacity, and grit. The Cottrell award recognizes the unrestrained multifaceted commitment of truly special physician-scientists dedicated to the quadripartite mission of academic medicine: education, research, clinical care, and social responsibility.¹  As such, it is particularly appropriate that the 2023 James E. Cottrell, M.D., American Society of Anesthesiologists Presidential Scholar Award be bestowed upon Karsten Bartels, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., an outstanding clinician, mentor, educator, and of course scientist. As department chairs, it was an honor to nominate Dr. Bartels for this award and an even greater honor to be asked to provide a few words about his career.

Dr. Bartels is currently vice chair for research and professor (with tenure) of anesthesiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He holds the Robert Lieberman Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology and is the inaugural director of the Robert Lieberman Research Initiative within the University of Nebraska Medical Center Department of Anesthesiology. Dr. Bartels completed his medical degree at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany, in 2004. He then immigrated to North America, first to Canada as a research assistant in the lab of Arthur S. Slutsky, M.D., M.A.Sc., B.A.Sc., at the University of Toronto and then on to the United States after a successful match into anesthesiology residency at the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Bartels was committed to academic anesthesiology from the start of his career, focusing not just on mastery of the clinical skills necessary to be an anesthesiologist but also demonstrating a desire to contribute to the promulgation of new knowledge within the specialty. Consequently, despite the burden of clinical training, by the end of his residency, Dr. Bartels had authored two research articles published in Anesthesia & Analgesia.^2,3  Not surprisingly, while at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Bartels was both a Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research resident scholar and a research fellow in the lab of Clifford Woolf, M.B., B.Ch., Ph.D., and also published multiple further articles, including a novel article in Pain that was focused on ceftriaxone’s analgesic properties for a neuropathic pain model.⁴  Dr. Bartels then moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he completed a fellowship in pain medicine in 2010, followed by two additional fellowships at Duke University in adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology in 2012 and critical care medicine in 2013. Notably, in his last year at Duke, Dr. Bartels began to define himself as an academic anesthesiologist, publishing eight articles, including a well cited review in Anesthesiology on perioperative organ injury, which highlighted the epidemiologic relevance of 30-day postoperative mortality in the context of leading causes of death from anesthesia and surgery.⁵  After his fellowship training, Dr. Bartels joined the faculty at the University of Colorado (2013 to 2021), where he continued to conduct innovative research while also receiving a Ph.D. in clinical investigations from the University of Colorado Graduate School in 2018. In 2021, Dr. Bartels was recruited to the University of Nebraska as the anesthesiology department’s inaugural vice chair for research. He has continued to build and grow his research career in the time since assuming this important leadership role.

Dr. Bartels’ program of scientific inquiry is focused on health services research in perioperative medicine, his work being unified by the methods used rather than a specific subject area. Inspired by his experience as a pain fellow, Dr. Bartels began his career as a clinical faculty member and physician-scientist by studying patient perioperative opioid use and storage patterns, particularly after hospital discharge. By leveraging extradepartmental mentorship, he rapidly built expertise, becoming one of the first anesthesiologists to research iatrogenic harm from overprescription of opioids after surgery. This work became the foundation for his 2016, K23 mentored scientist career development award from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse. It was this successful collaboration that launched Dr. Bartels’ career as an independent clinical researcher. Over the next 5 years, Dr. Bartels and his colleagues went on to describe the effects of opioids and other predictors, including neuromuscular blockade reversal agents, on adverse outcomes after surgery with the work published in high-impact journals such as the Annals of Thoracic Surgery,⁶ British Journal of Anaesthesia,⁷  Anesthesiology,⁸ JAMA Surgery,⁹  and Anesthesia & Analgesia.^10–12  Moreover, his work¹³  was rapidly integrated into guidelines, including the 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain.¹⁴  Shortly after his transition to his new role at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2021, Dr. Bartels was awarded a 5-year Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality R01 grant, providing more than $2M in funding for his outcomes lab to explore the efficiency and quality of postsurgical pain management. This grant directly led to publication of a 20,000 patient multicenter pragmatic trial examining the impact of embedding electronic opioid prescribing guidance in an electronic ordering system.¹⁵  A second randomized trial examining the efficiency and quality in postsurgical pain therapy after discharge is currently underway (Clinical Trial NCT05221866), with completion expected in late 2025.¹⁶ 

Over the years, Dr. Bartels has contributed a significant portfolio of high-quality peer-reviewed publications. Specifically, he has thus far published 96 peer-reviewed articles, 33 of which list him as the first author and 29 of which list him as the senior author. He was listed in Stanford’s 2022 annual assessment of the top 2% of all researchers in the world based on his work’s impact.¹⁷  Notably, as of today, in NIH RePORTER (https://reporter.nih.gov/), there are a total of 279 active R01 awards in anesthesiology departments across the United States. A majority of these are held by individuals who are full-time scientists with minimal to no clinical obligations. Most are also within anesthesiology departments possessing large pre-existing academic and research footprints. Reflecting on the national shortage of physician-scientists in anesthesiology, Dr. Bartels is currently the only anesthesiologist with R01-level funding in his department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He serves as an important and impactful role model emphasizing to both departments and individual anesthesiologists that good research can be undertaken by many individuals, including those outside of what can seem to some to be the “ivory tower” of a few academic anesthesiology departments.

Dr. Bartels’s impact as a leader and a mentor is substantial. As a nationally recognized clinician-scientist, he provides service as a member, chair, and co-chair of multiple national committees for societies, including the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the National Institutes of Health. He is a member of the editorial board for three of our specialty’s leading journals, including the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, Pain Medicine, and Anesthesia & Analgesia (associate editor). One significant national acknowledgment of his research expertise is his recent appointment as a permanent member of the Healthcare Effectiveness and Outcomes Research study section for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, for which he serves as the only anesthesiologist.

It is thus not surprising to the authors that Dr. Bartels has been instrumental in promoting academic anesthesiology as a career choice and that he has positively affected the career development of medical students, trainees, and junior faculty across the country. Some of the highlights of Dr. Bartels’ mentoring and academic leadership track record include: (1) more than 10 years of service to the American Board of Anesthesiology as an editor for the written exam, (2) being a lead editor of the most widely read textbook in cardiac anesthesia (Hensley’s Practical Approach to Cardiothoracic Anesthesia),¹⁸  (3) previous teacher of the year awards from trainees at his institution, and (4) serving as a site mentor for the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research’s Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship. Dr. Bartels has also directly mentored more than 30 medical students, residents, and early-stage faculty to their first-ever peer-reviewed publication, and several have achieved research awards for their work under his tutelage. Despite still being relatively junior in his own career, Dr. Bartels has shown significant commitment and tremendous success in advancing the careers of others.

Leading in academic medicine in 2023 requires a commitment to promote a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. Dr. Bartels’ leadership in planning, funding, and conducting the first-ever Cardiovascular Outcomes Research in Perioperative Medicine conference attests to his commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by his ensuring gender equity on both the planning committee and the program and that attendance by individuals under-represented in medicine was facilitated. Simply put, Dr. Bartels not only is deeply committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion but also shows a clear track record for actually executing on this commitment.

Dr. Bartels already has an established and esteemed national reputation as a physician-scientist with expertise in clinical outcomes research in perioperative medicine. Just as significant, he has amplified his impact by empowering others to be successful. We congratulate Dr. Bartels as the 21st recipient of the prestigious James E. Cottrell, M.D., Presidential Scholar Award and eagerly anticipate further observing and appreciating the impact of his current and future work on our specialty.