Should there be a Critical Care Medicine forum?

[cardsurgguy]

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What do you think?

I worked on ICU's for a couple years before I found SDN and still do now and it's always surprised me that there's no critical care medicine forum here

I've seen a couple of threads about critical care medicine, so I'm not the only one who finds it fascinating

And obviously it shouldn't be a subforum since you can get there via internal medicine (i.e. MICU type stuff), surgery and anesthesia (SICU) and pediatrics for pediatric critical care (PICU), cardiology and CT surgery (CCU and open heart ICU) (obviously not true critical care medicine as in the fellowship, but cardiac ICU is what I meant)
So I think it's pretty safe to say it should be its own separate forum

So what do you think?

How about a forum for those of us interested in critical care to ramble on about our PEEP's and PAP's and blood gases for vent management, multi organ failure in sepsis, CRRT dialysis for renal failure, screwy coag labs in DIC and how to treat it, trauma, burns, and on and on

Vote and maybe we can get our own forum... 😀

 

[dinosaurcrumpet]

How about a forum for those of us interested in critical care to ramble on about our PEEP's and PAP's and blood gases for vent management, multi organ failure in sepsis, CRRT dialysis for renal failure, screwy coag labs in DIC and how to treat it, trauma, burns, and on and on

Nice idea, but this kind of thing (ie. educational material) never ends up being discussed in any forum. Or rather, the rare occasions where it does end up being sidetracked by vitriolic dueling trollish egos within a few posts of the OP. A CC forum would be merely a place for CC candidates and workers to discuss the rewards, frustrations, future prospects etc. of the job. Sinse the core discipline (surgery, gas, medicine) is the most important determining factor in these issues it's best to keep those discussions in those forums.

My vote is no, BTW.

 

[cchoukal]

With all due respect to dinosaur (who's absolutely right about the likelihood that topics would be quickly hijacked by tools), I think the fact that such a broad range of specialties participate in CCM makes a separate forum a good idea.

 

[cardsurgguy]

With all due respect to dinosaur (who's absolutely right about the likelihood that topics would be quickly hijacked by tools), I think the fact that such a broad range of specialties participate in CCM makes a separate forum a good idea.

I agree.

What dinosaur said happens in all forums. But so what? Should the acts of a few idiots prevent something from happening that the majority will use right?

I would say no.

Keep those votes coming...

 

[undecided3yr]

I absolutely agree that there needs to ba a new forum. I would also be interested in just how many ways you can take a career path into the ICU.

I really like ICU, now that I have a little understanding of the Vent, but I wonder if its liek ER and can lead to burn out. Then it would be interesting to know what people tend to fall back on.

 

[cardsurgguy]

I absolutely agree that there needs to ba a new forum. I would also be interested in just how many ways you can take a career path into the ICU.

Unless there's another way that I'm not aware of, the 3 main ways to get to a critical care medicine fellowship are after 1 of 3 residencies

1. IM
2. General Surgery
3. Anesthesia

I believe (although I could be wrong) that the fellowship length is different for each of the three. I think the fellowship after IM may be a year longer. Not sure though.

I really like ICU, now that I have a little understanding of the Vent, but I wonder if its liek ER and can lead to burn out. Then it would be interesting to know what people tend to fall back on.

The attendings that I work with now and have worked with all seem to be very happy.

I have a relative who is a SICU attending (critical care medicine fellowship after anesthesia residency) at an academic medical center who also likes his job.

I would assume you could fall back on whatever residency you did.

Then again, the ER docs that I've worked with are also happy...

So who knows, maybe they are putting miniscule doses nitrous in the vents and everybody at my hospital is happy... 😕






Any of the Mods want to weigh in on the possibility of a critical care medicine forum?

The poll seems to support it. As of now, it's 62% yes.

 

[Idiopathic]

I think that you can do CCM after an ER residency.

 

[cchoukal]

There are a few IM/ER/CC combined residencies, and I know of one ER resident that did a SICU fellowship at the U of MN. The fellowship years are different. In IM, it's typical to do a 3 year combined pulmonary and critical care fellowship (the better research-oriented programs are going to 4 years!), but it IS possible to do just a 2 year CC fellowship. Anesthesiology fellowships are generally 1 year, but there are some that offer 2. I suspect these are more research focused. GS SICU fellowships are generally 1 year. I guess the GS and anesthesiology fellowships are shorter because there's a lot of ICU management built into those residencies, particularly GS. The very practice of anesthesiology centers around at least the mechanics of critical care, if not the diagnosis and management (although many anesthesiologists would say diagnosis and management of critical illness and critical episodes are every-day occurrences in practice).

And, yes, when burnout sets in, people generally fall back on their "day jobs." It's probably more accurate to say that people try to avoid burnout by mixing CC practice with their day jobs all along.

As for the scope of practice, it's generally true (but with multiple exceptions) that IM folks stick to MICU, and anesthesiology and GS folks stick to SICU/CTICU/Burn. That said, there are plenty of examples of anesthesiologists in MICU settings (UCSF, Stanford, U of Chicago).

 

[psychbender]

I vote yes.

It would be easier to get information about CCM if there was a single forum for CCM discussions, rather than having to search and surf through three or four different forums for the information (yes, I am a little lazy).

 

[DrMom]

We're going to try it out. 🙂

The new Critical Care forum is here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forumdisplay.php?f=169


If there are threads in the other forums that'd now make sense to have in the new one, please post a link and I'll get them moved over. Thanks!