Critical Care

Welcome to the Critical Care Committee! 

This committee is designed to help students better understand the care of critically ill patients through case-based learning, ICU-focused teaching, practical workshops, and exposure to the many specialties involved in intensive care. Members will develop a stronger foundation in recognizing clinical deterioration, understanding life-support interventions, and thinking through complex patient care. 

What is Critical Care? 

Critical care is the management of serious conditions such as shock, respiratory failure, sepsis, cardiac arrest, neurologic emergencies, and multi-organ failure. Care often involves tools like ventilators, vasopressors, invasive monitoring, dialysis, and bedside ultrasound, all guided by a deep understanding of rapidly changing physiology and clinical conditions. Critical care is both highly procedural, involving extremely fast clinical decision-making, while also being extremely patient focused, involving compassionate communication and understanding patient goals of care.  

Pathway to Critical Care 

Becoming a critical care physician begins with residency training in a specialty such as internal medicine, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, surgery, pediatrics, or neurology followed by fellowship training in critical care. This path leads to a career at the center of the ICU, where physicians interpret subtle changes in physiology, guide life-support decisions, perform high-acuity procedures, and help shape the course of care when every minute matters. 

Types of Critical Care Units 

• NICU: Focuses on premature and critically ill newborns, especially those with respiratory distress, congenital abnormalities, or complications of prematurity. 

• PICU: Focuses on critically ill infants, children, and adolescents with severe infections, congenital disorders, trauma, or respiratory failure.  

• SICU: Focuses on post-op patients, including patients recovering from major surgery, high risk patients, and patients who experienced perioperative complications 

• MICU: Focuses on patients with severe medical illnesses, like sepsis, respiratory failure, or multiorgan failure 

• Burn ICU: Focuses on patients experiencing severe thermal injuries, inhalation injury, and complex wound care 

• Trauma ICU: Specialized SICU focused on severely injured patients following blunt or penetrating trauma that requires additional support 

• Neuro ICU: Focuses on neurologic emergencies such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, status epilepticus, spinal cord injury, and intracranial hemorrhage.  

• CVICU: Focuses on severe cardiac disease, including cardiogenic shock, advanced HF, arrhythmias, mechanical circulatory support, and post-operative care 

• CTICU: Focuses on patients following a cardiac/thoracic surgery, often involving ECMO and transplant 

Shadowing Opportunities 

Opportunities are available for interested students, please reach out to one of our committee chairs for coordination with available physicians.