[Core curriculum of intensive care and emergency medicine in internal medicine]

Internal medicine and its associated subspecialities represent an important cornerstone of intensive care and clinical emergency medicine. This curriculum-compiled by members of the German Society of Medical Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internistische Intensivmedizin und Notfallmedizin), the German Society of Internal Medicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin) including subspeciality societies, the Professional Association of German Internists (Berufsverband Deutscher Internistinnen und Internisten, BDI) and the German Association for Palliative Medicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Palliativmedizin, DGP)-presents an overview of knowledge, skills (competence levels I-III), behaviors, and attitudes necessary for the highest treatment quality for the internal medicine aspects of intensive care and emergency medicine. It includes general aspects of intensive care and clinical emergency medicine (structure and process quality, emergency department: primary diagnostics and treatment as well as the indication for subsequent treatment, resuscitation room management, clinical syndromes in intensive care medicine, diagnostics and monitoring, general therapeutic measures, ethics, hygiene measures, and pharmacotherapy). Subsequently, specific aspects concerning angiology/vascular medicine, endocrinology, diabetology and metabolism, gastroenterology and hepatology, geriatric medicine, hematology and medical oncology, infectiology, cardiology, nephrology, palliative care, pneumology, rheumatology, and toxicology are addressed. Publications focusing on the content of advanced training are quoted to support this concept. The curriculum is written primarily for internists but may also show practicing intensivists and emergency physicians the broad spectrum of internal medicine diseases and comorbidities presented by patients admitted to the intensive care unit or the emergency department.