Australasian training and examination in intensive care
Intensive care units were formed in both Australia and New Zealand in the mid-to late 50's as they were in many other parts of the world. In the early stages, such units were usually staffed by part-time or visiting doctors who carried out their other specialist duties concurrently. During the early 60's, certain doctors within those units decided to specialise only in intensive care and gave up their other specialist interests such as internal medicine, anaesthesia or surgery. This specialisation rapidly caught on so that in the 70's, most major units were staffed largely or entirely by such full-time specialists. The primary specialty from which most of these intensivists came was anaesthesia, but there were a significant number of physicians as well. As might be expected, the two groups tended initially to grow in isolation from one another, though in the late 70's and 80's many units are being staffed by a mixture of specialists from the different basic training schemes of anaesthesia and internal medicine. In the early 70's, the Faculty of Anaesthetists, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, realised that there was an independent specialty arising for which there were ill-defined training requirements. The Faculty felt responsible for this new specialty of intensive care because: