Critical care workforce*

Abstract

The recent Health Resources and Services Administration report on critical care manpower details the impending crisis in the critical care workforce in the United States.A review of the Health Resources and Services Administration statistics indicate the present structure for training critical care physicians through combined pulmonary/critical care fellowships is, and will remain, woefully inadequate to meet demand.Training for intensive care unit physicians will require new paradigms for training, including consideration of free-standing critical care residencies and multidisciplinary critical care fellowships.Unless the training structure changes, the worsening shortage of intensivists will precipitate a crisis, resulting in the disintegration of critical care delivery in the United States.