David Crippen – författare

Intensive care medicine is one of the fastest growing services provided by hospitals and perhaps one of the most expensive.  Yet in response to the global financial crisis of the last few years, healthcare funding is slowing or decreasing throughout the world. 

How we manage health care resources in the intensive care unit (ICU) now and in a future that promises only greater cost constraints is the subject of this book, the third in an informal series of volumes providing a global perspective on difficult issues arising in the ICU. 

Taking 12 developed countries as their focus, leading experts provide a country-by-country analysis of current ICU resource allocation.  A second group of experts use the chapters as a departure point to analyze current ICU resource allocation at the level of the global medical village.  The process is repeated, but with an eye toward the future – first country by country, then at the global level – that takes into account initiatives and reforms now underway.

A fictional healthcare plan, the “Fair & Equitable Healthcare Plan,” is put forth to address weaknesses in existing approaches, and healthcare experts and ethicists are invited to respond to its often provocative provisions.

Itself structured as a dialogue, the book is an excellent way to start or to continue serious discussion about the allocation of ICU healthcare resources now and in the years ahead. 

This book brings together personal narratives from critical care medicine specialists around the world. Most of these physicians started in critical care at or before the exponential increase in technological modalities to reverse or sustain organ function, have seen patient care both ways, and have worked as many as 30 years or more at the bedside. The narratives are organized around such themes as : how and why these physicians entered the discipline of critical care; what was critical care like in the beginning; how they have experienced the flood of innovations in critical care; why they decided to retire (or not); and what their retirement options have been (or not).

Composed by influential critical care medicine specialists, The Intensivist’s Challenge: Aging and Career Growth in a High-Stress Medical Specialty is a valuable resource bringing together a discussion of the nature and problems of aging as they apply to physicians in a high-stress occupation, while assessing the value of clinical experience at the bedside in a world increasingly full of soulless technology.