Courses For The Intensivists

Intensive care units need a specific kind of study because the way they function is far different from other units of a hospital. The part that intensive care nurses and doctors play in a hospital includes vigorous hours of functioning and care. The patients in the intensive care unit need the care that the general ward cannot offer. To know how and what an intensive care nurse or doctor must do when it comes to these units, they must undergo a specific course. There are websites that offer ICU study guides for the ones pursuing this course. For being a part of the intensive care team, it is necessary to have at least some knowledge about the work. These guides make a way for them, so they can master the skill of intensive care; as it is known that lives depend on machines and medicines when it comes to ICUs. A person who is hospitalizes for a serious injury or disease, that’s when he/she has to face the intensive care unit; knowing that, the care they need is different in every aspect.

While the ones who are pursuing the intensive care course, the basic ICU course is the first step. This is undertaken by the ones who are willing to be intensivists. Intensivists include doctors, nurses and everyone who works in this department. The advantage of this system is a more coordinated management of the patient based on a team who work exclusively in ICU. Other countries have open ICUs, where the primary physician chooses to admit and makes the management decisions. There is increasingly strong evidence that ‘closed’ intensive care units staffed by intensivists provide better outcomes for patients. Patient management in intensive care differs significantly between countries. In countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Spain, where intensive care medicine is a well-established speciality, many larger ICUs are described as ‘closed’. In a closed unit, the intensive care specialist takes on the senior role where the patient's primary physician acts as a consultant. The certification in critical care medicine is available through all five specialty boards. Intensivists are the ones who have specialized during the course of intensive care.

There are medical books that these intensivists refer to when studying for this course. With a primary training in internal medicine, people sometimes pursue combined fellowship training in another subspecialty such as pulmonary medicine, cardiology, infectious disease or nephrology. Practitioners work in the ICU including nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians. Most medical research has demonstrated that ICU care provided by intensivists produce better outcomes and more cost-effective care. Sometimes the ones pursuing this course might find notes repeating themselves on different college sites, but that happens because the syllabus of this examination is the same for all the students equally; it’s just that the way these notes have been explained might differ from one college site to another. Some colleges offer notes in the word document format while others might use PDFs, PPTs or excel sheets. There is also a wealth of educational material in the format of lectures and presented in a media-rich format.