Intensive care medicine comes of age

And offers a multidisciplinary model for future emerging specialties

Lord Nuffield is reputed to have said, “Anyone can give an anaesthetic and that is the problem.” This could equally well have been said of intensive care medicine over the past 30 years—a specialty without a home and until recently without a recognised training in the United Kingdom. This summer, however, intensive care medicine was recognised in both the UK and Europe under the European specialist medical qualification regulations. Other countries have established training programmes in intensive care medicine, but the UK's is unique in that a multidisciplinary group planned the training for a multidisciplinary specialty. The establishment of the specialty thus holds lessons for other emerging multidisciplinary specialties—and it may have wider benefits for the parent specialties.

The basis of intensive care medicine is wide, incorporating skills from many …