"Critical Care medicine involves the diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of clinical problems and represents the extreme end of disease, both in terms of the patient's condition and the pressure of the physicians treating them. The critical care specialist is usually the primary provider of care in an intensive/critical environment. They are required to be extremely competent across a wide range of conditions but also skilled in common procedures, techniques and the use of specialist devices. Typically training is over three years as a specialty fellowship and can be combined with pulmonary training. In the USA, the Society of Critical Care Medicine represents around 16,000 trained professionals and more than 5.7 million patients are admitted annually to an ICU department. The most common conditions are cardiac, respiratory and neurological. In the UK intensive care training runs from ST3 to ST7 in three stages with joint programs available with acute medicine, anesthesia, emergency and respiratory medicine. Whilst program numbers are relatively modest, this is one of the areas seeing an increase in trainees"-- Provided by publisher.