Regulations of education and training of intensive care medicine in Germany and their structural consequences

Excerpt

Intensive care medicine in Germany is not a specialty per se, but linked to several basic specialties. Until now the catalogue of knowledge and skills has contained a core curriculum mandatory to all intensivists. A recent reform of the training regulations is going to link the intensive care qualification more closely to the basic specialties, so that the common core curriculum concept is abandoned. Thus, intensive care medicine is moving towards a sub-specialty. This new concept opposes recent structural developments in large hospitals where, under economic pressure, several ICUs are going to be merged to centres for intensive care medicine. This will create interdisciplinary problems and renew the old discussion “who owns intensive care?” …