The role, focus, and funding of research in a department of surgery.

The arduous process of selecting a surgical department chairperson focuses exclusively on qualities irrelevant to the job. Having been selected because he or she publishes in the fancy journals, the new chairperson must recruit a stable full of clinically active stallions. An active research program stimulates intellectual excitement, glues the surgical faculty together, and convinces even the most audacious master surgeon that an idea is more exciting than an accessible parking space.