Critical care medicine education of surgeons: Recommendations from the Surgical Section of the Society of Critical Care Medicine

Perspective: The role of surgeons in critical care medicine has a long and esteemed past, The presence of surgeons in intensive care units provides sp ecific insights and perspectives to the care of surgical patients sometimes not fully appreciated by the nonsurgical practitioners caring for the same patients. The training and education of surgeons is becoming more complex, fragmented, and lengthy. The knowledge base and skill set required to mana ge critically ill or injured surgical patients is also becoming more extens ive but has the potential of becoming lost in the process of providing the overall educational program for surgical trainees, Simultaneously, nonsurgi cal specialties are continuing to train individuals with special skills in critical care medicine and the concept of "hospitalists" is becoming more a ccepted by institutions across the United States. The certification exams i n critical care medicine remain under the aegis of the individual medical s pecialty boards, and there is still not a unified examination process in cr itical care. Surgeons, in particular, have tremendous pressures these days to spend more clinical time in the operating room, and the task of consiste ntly conducting high quality research is also becoming arduous. This list of reasons could continue but are simply examples for why surgeon s need to spend focused attention on how best to train and educate upcoming surgical trainees in regards to the principles of critical care medicine, The critically ill or injured patients need this focused attention and the specialty of surgical critical care medicine needs this attention. The Surg ical Section of the Society of Critical Care Medicine has developed this po sition statement in the hopes that ongoing discussion and refinement of thi s particular aspect of surgery will continue on several levels.