Introduction

We would like to thank you for your contribution to our educational needs survey. We had an excellent response with over 700 individuals responding to the survey.

Most of you who responded to our survey are working clinically on the ICU (92%), with a vast spread of experience. We had high response rates from Portugal (10%), Germany (8%), UK (7%), Italy (7%), Spain (6%), with 27% individuals responding from outside Europe.

Highlights of the survey

  • You would like to see future educational activities focused on the top 5 core topics: acute respiratory failure, haemodynamics, infections & sepsis, trauma & management of mass casualties and nervous system disorders & neurointensive care
  • You would like to see more practical sessions on: Ultrasound (thoracic, abdominal and vascular), echocardiography, methods of cardiovascular monitoring, mechanical ventilation and airway management
  • You would also like to see educational sessions on end of life, human factors & crisis management, communication, leadership & health care management and staff wellbeing
  • Educational activities that you are particularly interested in accessing through the society are e-learning and master classes. With Master classes you prefer to have interactive & very interactive sessions, simulations, case-based fundamentals, hands-on and clinical case study workshops. In e-learning you are particularly interested in guided training programs and webinars. You are also interested in tailored education such as educational pathways on specific ICM topics.
  • The main barriers to attending our master classes are costs and ability to take time off clinical work.

Suggestions made for improvement:

  • More scholarships and grants. The costs of travel, accommodation and registration of the Master classes make it sometimes inaccessible to trainee doctors, allied health professionals and candidates attending from low and/or middle-income countries. Suggestions were made to make the Master classes more financially accessible to these subgroups.
  • To consider rotation of Master classes in different countries within and outside Europe. More collaboration with local critical care societies.
  • More remote/web education, more e-learning, e-lectures and webinars to facilitate distance learning. Inclusion of simulation exercises and case-based fundamentals in e-learning
  • Better quality of teachers/trainers. The need for Train the trainers
  • Master classes to be run more frequently. More interactivity. More simulations.
  • Educational activities to be aligned and contextual differences to be considered when designed an educational activity
  • You would like to see future educational activities focused on the top 5 core topics: acute respiratory failure, haemodynamics, infections & sepsis, trauma & management of mass casualties and nervous system disorders & neurointensive care
  • You would like to see more practical sessions on: Ultrasound (thoracic, abdominal and vascular), echocardiography, methods of cardiovascular monitoring, mechanical ventilation and airway management
  • You would also like to see educational sessions on end of life, human factors & crisis management, communication, leadership & health care management and staff wellbeing
  • Educational activities that you are particularly interested in accessing through the society are e-learning and master classes. With Master classes you prefer to have interactive & very interactive sessions, simulations, case-based fundamentals, hands-on and clinical case study workshops. In e-learning you are particularly interested in guided training programs and webinars. You are also interested in tailored education such as educational pathways on specific ICM topics.
  • The main barriers to attending our master classes are costs and ability to take time off clinical work.

Actions taken

The ESICM Division of Professional Development is working continuously to improve the portfolio of our educational initiatives. Your opinions are important to us. We will use the results of this survey to further shape the future educational strategy of the Society.

  • We boost adult learner centred, evidence-based learning, following the latest updates in continuous medical education as part of our continuous professional development actions. Our Master Classes already employ interactive and very interactive sessions, simulations, hands-on, clinical case workshops and serious games. Online support classrooms dedicated to pre-course study make use of the ESICM Academy resources in place to better align our educational activities.
  • We are delighted to see that in our Master Class offer we cover most of the topics highlighted in the survey such as: Mechanical Ventilation and Advanced Bedside Monitoring in Acute Respiratory Failure, Haemodynamic Monitoring, Sepsis and Severe Infections, The Art of Trauma Care, Core Critical Care Ultrasound and End-of-Life Care. Moreover, our master class on Life-Threatening Emergencies in ICU meets your needs on human factors and crisis management.
  • Our ESICM Academy and e-Courses are expanding and we have now over 56 e-Courses, most of them already published and freely available to our members.
  • The number of webinars has increased exponentially. During COVID-19 weekly webinars have been organised to facilitate learning from peers and best practice exchange.
  • Your interest in pathway has been also carefully considered. We have just concluded piloting the Infection Pathway and now, we will be analysing the results to ensure continuous improvement and expansion to other ICM topics in the future.
  • Finally, we are constantly looking at ways of financially supporting doctors in training, nurses and allied health professionals as well as candidates attending our Master Classes from low and/or medium income countries. Wherever possible we offer grants to decrease their registration, travel and accommodation costs.

Award winners

We would like to thank all of you who participated in the survey. In recognition for the time and effort to complete our survey, we have offered 10 free places to Master classes in 2020-2021. Winners have been  notified. See below who they are:

    • Nicoletta Artana (IT)
    • Elena Cristina Becherescu (RO)
    • Sara Escalona-Rodriguez (ES)
    • Phillip Howells (UK)
    • Maria Carolina Paulino (PT)
    • Kalliopi Straka (GR)
    • Michal Swidrak (PL)
    • Richard Truse (DE)
    • Rob Wilting (NL)
    • To be confirmed

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