A Current Overview of Intensive Care Subspeciality Education in Turkey: What Do Educational Staff, Subspecialty Residents and Specialists Think?

Abstract

Objective: Intensive care subspecialty programs have been opened in many medical faculties and training-research hospitals in our country, and intensivists who have graduated are working in the field. The aim of this study aimed to collect information about the status of intensive care subspecialty education and the working conditions of intensive care specialists working in the field. Materials and Methods: After obtaining the ethics committee approval, three questionnaires for intensive care subspecialty educational staff (ES), research assistants (RA), and graduated specialists (PG) were prepared through the Google Survey and published on social media. In the questionnaires, the status of education and working conditions in the field after graduation were questioned. The descriptive statistics method was used for analysis. Results: The questionnaires were answered by 38 ES, 99 RA, and 46 PG. Fifty-four percent of the ES were between the ages of 51 and 60 and 65.8% were women. Fifty-one percent of ES were working in a university hospital. Forty-seven percent of full-time ES were working in the department of anesthesiology and reanimation subdepartment of intensive care, and the rate of participation of all partner clinics in the program was 86.5%. Twenty-seven (71.1%) of the ES thought that the TUKMOS core training program should be changed. The main specialty of 54.5% of RAs were anesthesiology and reanimation, and 52% of them were studying at a state university. The rate of those who were on duty at the hospital was 87.8%, and the rate of those who described the rotation training as “medium” was 36.5%. Sixty-five percent of the PGs were anesthesiology and reanimation specialists, and 64.4% said that they would like to primarily work in training and research hospitals in terms of efficiency and qualit; 87% of them stated that intensive care specialists should be able to work in any kind of intensive care unit, 69.6% thinks that the education they receive is sufficient. Conclusion: We believe that evaluating and sharing the data of this study may cause positive changes in intensive care subspecialty education and post-graduate working conditions.

Keywords

• intensive care
• subspeciality
• training