As an MSTP who went into EM and now doing bench research I'm probably a good one to answer this. When I went into EM most of my research and med school advisors were horified but it was clearly a good choice for me. Most bench research in EM is in rescusitation, ischemia/reperfusion injury, shock or sepsis. Some of this involves large animal models and is probably best suited to people with backgrounds in physiology etc... It might not seem much like "bench research" if your background is in biochemical/molecular/cellular fields. At the time I chose to make the leap into EM there were a handful of people doing bench work in EM. Examples which encouraged me included Steve Thom at UPenn, Chuck Cairns in Colorado, and several groups in Michigan and Pennsylvannia studying biochemical mechanisms of ischemia/reperfusion injury.
In terms of support for bench research I would say that philosophically most programs are very, very interested. The problem comes in terms of financial support. Most(but not all) programs lack the financial resources to support someone doing research most of the time unless they have their own grant support. This makes it difficult when you are first starting since bench research requires a lot of protected time and grants are harder to get until you have a track record. Richer medicine departments often give starting researchers significant start up funds and several years of support until they have their own grants. I have friends in various medicine and oncology departments whose start up packages over 2-3 years came to well over $500,000.
I think EM does offer a way out of this catch 22. I am a research associate (like a glorified postdoc) in an immunology department. I have some of my own grant support and I am applying for more. Meanwhile I am moonlighting 4 nights per month in a private ED. This has several advantages. First and most important, I can study whatever I want instead of making sure it fits under the umbrella of EM. Second, I can work in a world-class research environment with all the resources, education and collaborators that implies. Third, EM is really well suited to my personality and clinical interests- more so than most research friendly medicine fields.
Fourth, the private ED pays QUITE well for 4 weekend nights per month. My long term goal is to eventually get an appointment in a basic science department with my own grant support and an adjunct appointment with the EM department. This will allow me to do full time research, teach students and postdocs, and work a bit in an academic ED. I'll let you know in a few years how it all works out.
Last years ACEP had probably less than 30 posters that someone with a PhD background in biochemical/molecular/cellular fields would consider bench research but the range and quality were quite good. Interestingly, most were done in collaboration with labs from fields outside EM
I always prefered tootsie rolls to tootsie pops.
