%0 Journal Article
%T Training in critical care echocardiography
%A Paul H Mayo
%J Annals of Intensive Care
%D 2011
%I Springer
%R 10.1186/2110-5820-1-36
%X Echocardiography has unparalleled utility in the intensive care unit (ICU). It allows the intensivist to assess rapidly the anatomy and function of the heart in patients with hemodynamic failure. This allows the clinician to make immediate visual diagnosis and to guide the ongoing management of the case. Its ease of use, bedside utility, and quality of information make cardiac ultrasonography a key skill for the frontline intensivist. Given the importance of echocardiography in the ICU, an important issue is how to provide training to intensivists so that they are competent in the field. This article will review the issues related to training in critical care echocardiography (CCE).This article is of interest for two groups of intensivists. For the intensivist who does not have training but who seeks to develop competence in CCE, this article will be helpful in providing a guide to the training process. For the intensivist who already has training but who has the additional responsibility to train other clinicians to become competent in CCE, this article will be helpful as a framework for developing teaching process.In the United States, there are approximately 6,000 intensivists at the attending level who need training in CCE. These are frontline attendings who seek to use CCE as a primary bedside imaging modality and who work on a full-time basis in the ICU. Some of these are faculty intensivists who have responsibility for critical care fellows who need training in CCE. In Europe, it is difficult to estimate the number of intensivists who need training, because each country has individual patterns of unit staffing. It is likely that the numbers are similar in magnitude to the United States. In Australia, there are approximately 400 fulltime intensivists who need training in CCE. It is not possible to estimate the numbers in other countries of the Asia Pacific region, Asia, Africa, or South America. China and India alone may add many thousands more to the count in
%U http://www.annalsofintensivecare.com/content/1/1/36