Training internists to meet critical care needs in the United States: a consensus statement from the Critical Care Societies Collaborative (CCSC)

Abstract

Objectives: Multiple training pathways are recognized by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) for internal medicine (IM) physicians to certify in critical care medicine (CCM) via the American Board of Internal Medicine. While each involves 1 year of clinical fellowship training in CCM, substantive differences in training requirements exist among the various pathways. The Critical Care Societies Collaborative convened a task force to review these CCM pathways and to provide recommendations for unified and coordinated training requirements for IM-based physicians.

Participants: A group of CCM professionals certified in pulmonary-CCM and/or IM-CCM from ACGME-accredited training programs who have expertise in education, administration, research, and clinical practice.

Data sources and synthesis: Relevant published literature was accessed through a MEDLINE search and references provided by all task force members. Material published by the ACGME, American Board of Internal Medicine, and other specialty organizations was also reviewed. Collaboratively and iteratively, the task force reached consensus using a roundtable meeting, electronic mail, and conference calls.

Main results: Internal medicine-CCM-based fellowships have disparate program requirements compared to other internal medicine subspecialties and adult CCM fellowships. Differences between IM-CCM and pulmonary-CCM programs include the ratio of key clinical faculty to fellows and a requirement to perform 50 therapeutic bronchoscopies. Competency-based training was considered uniformly desirable for all CCM training pathways.

Conclusions: The task force concluded that requesting competency-based training and minimizing variations in the requirements for IM-based CCM fellowship programs will facilitate effective CCM training for both programs and trainees.