ESICM Berlin – Educational Tools in Intensive Care Medicine

Authors

R. Moreno, M.D.

Chairman of the Division of Scientific Affairs

Chairman of the Congress Committee of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

D. Phelan, FJFICM, FFARCSI

Chairman of the Division of Professional Development

Chairman of the Education and Training Committee of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

Summary

Dr Moreno

previews the comprehensive scientific / educational offering at the ESICM Annual Congress to be held in Berlin, October 2004.

Correspondence

e-mail [email protected]

www.esicm.org

Five years after its first Berlin Congress, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) is pleased to return to the German capital.The Congress will again take place in the International Congress Centre Berlin (ICC), a large venue offering ample space for some 60 exhibitors and 4000 expected participants. Over 160 speakers from all over the world, but especially from Europe, will lecture within traditional sessions, such as the thematic, round table, tutorial and pro-con sessions.

The ESICM Annual Congress is characterised by the numerous abstract presentations during mostly unopposed sessions: Oral presentations and Poster sessions, which once again this year, should be of high scientific quality thanks to the 1036 abstracts received, out of which 848 have been selected. Readers are no doubt aware how important these sessions are as an opening for young scientists to present, often for the first time in their lives, the results of research and surveys in which they have participated.

Teaching tools have already been developed to offer training opportunities during the Congress. Both the Congress Committee and the Education and Training Committee cooperate to meet the requirements for training and professional development in intensive care medicine. The Educational sessions have been developed to offer a full educational track (11 sessions) facilitated by an interactive format (voting system). The sessions will be useful and enjoyable to a broad audience and they will provide excellent preparation for the Society examination in intensive care medicine, the European Diploma in Intensive Care. The precongress, post-graduate courses include courses for instructors on Fundamentals of Critical Care Support and, for the first time this year, an extended course on disaster management, which incorporates the SCCM’s Fundamentals of Disaster Management. All courses focus on timely topics, state their target audience and have precise learning objectives.

The PACT (Patient-centred Acute Care Training) programme also offers training opportunities at the Congress. Two sessions will specifically show-case the new PACT modules, namely Acute brain ischeamia, Acute severe hypertension, Oliguria and anuria, and Acute renal failure. Other lectures and Congress sessions will also use the corresponding PACT modules, where relevant, to demonstrate and utilise the modern, adult learning features of the PACT programme.

The Society is constantly innovating and featuring new activities based on developments in scientific and clinical practice. The new Competency session format, which allows close, interactive contact with experts in areas of clinical competence, will be repeated this year following the singular success of last year’s pilot trial. An introduction to computerised clinical simulation scenarios based on PACT clinical challenges will also be featured.

New sessions called “What I learned in the last two years” will be early morning sessions, where three clinical experts will teach us about “What [they] learned in the last two years in managing patients with…”; the three topics chosen for Berlin are ARDS, Sepsis, and Communityacquired pneumonia. These sessions are 30-min training sessions for physicians and nurses performing clinical work in the ICU setting. Other 30-min sessions called “What I learned today” will take place in the late afternoon allowing a senior ESICM Officer, responsible for the management and set-up of the programme, to highlight some topics that have been presented and/or discussed during the day. The objective is to summarise data and/or information that the speakers consider of outstanding importance to those who were not able to attend all of the related sessions due to conflict with the demands of simultaneous sessions on that day.

The ESICM is quickly diversifying its activities focusing on Professional development and Research, and we are pleased that the Congress reflects this evolution.