Education and Training in Intensive Care

Abstract

Intensive Care is a medical activity existing in the majority of the European countries for about 40 to 50 years. The need for Education and Training in Intensive Care (ETIC) was recognised early in the 1960’s and was, under various forms, included in the teaching programmes of several Anaesthesiology Departments. Later, other clinical departments of the hospital (e.g. Internal Medicine) developed similar teaching efforts, usually related with their involvement in the clinical practice of intensive care. Yet, it was only in the 1980’s that a task-force on Critical Care Medicine formulated exact guidelines to the “certification of CCM as a multidisciplinary subspecialty” under the auspices of the American Society of Critical Care Medicine [1]. The essentials of these guidelines were in the last decade adopted by the Intensive Care Societies of many European countries, and documents regulating the ETIC at national level appeared progressively. Efforts made by the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) were at the origin of these developments in Europe. The annual organisation of exams on intensive care and the attribution of a European Diploma on Intensive Care Medicine to those succeeding in the exams, is one of the most relevant contributions of the ESICM regarding ETIC. However, it was only recently that a task-force of the ESICM found that general consensus regarding these issues would exist in Europe and that “guidelines for a training programme in intensive care medicine” were produced under the auspices of the ESICM [2].