Critical Care Medicine:
- What is Critical Care Medicine?
Intensive Care Medicine or critical care medicine is a branch of medicine concerned with the provision of life support or organ support systems in patients who are critically ill and who usually require intensive monitoring.
Critical care medicine is a relatively new but increasingly important medical specialty. Physicians, Nurses or Paramedics who have training in critical care medicine are referred to as intensivists. The specialty requires additional fellowship training for physicians who complete their primary residency training in internal medicine, anesthesiology, or surgery. Board certification in critical care medicine is available through all three specialty boards. Nuse and Paramedic intensivists receive their training after basic education through ASTNA or the BCCTPC respectively. Intensivists-physicians with a primary training in internal medicine sometimes pursue combined fellowship training in another subspecialty such as pulmonary medicine, cardiology, infectious disease, or nephrology.
The Society of Critical Care Medicine is a well established multiprofessional society for practitioners who work in the ICU, including intensivists. Medical research has repeatedly demonstrated that ICU care provided by intensivists produces better outcomes and more cost effective care. This has led the Leapfrog Group to make a primary recommendation that all ICU patients be managed or co-managed by a dedicated intensivist who is exclusively responsible for patients in one ICU. Unfortunately there is a critical shortage of intensivists in the United States and most hospitals lack this critical physician team member.
