Medical education in critical care

Patient safety is garnering increasing attention in our health care system, and with a possible trend toward increasing patient adverse events in academic hospitals (CMAJ. 2004;170:1678-86), medical education needs to reevaluate resident training. Within critical care, teaching of trainees in a manner that minimizes medical errors and ensures competency when managing critically ill patients is now a priority. This article addresses 4 areas that are receiving increasing attention in medical education and are relevant to training in the critical care environment: evidence-based medicine, communication, evaluation, and simulation.