So you want to be … a critical care physician

Abstract

There is no speciality quite like it, working as part of a small, highlyskilled, multidisciplinary team, you actively take on the sickest patients within the hospital. Your role is not only to support the patient's acutely failed organs while attempting to diagnose and treat the underlying cause, but also to deal with a multitude of ethical, moral and organizational challenges. No one discipline takes on such a diverse range of patients and pathologies as critical care; a good understanding of physiology in health and disease is vital, but a working knowledge of other disciplines, particularly medicine, anaesthesia and surgery, are equally important. Indeed, it is one of the few remaining bastions of holistic hospital medicine.