The Critical Care Guidelines that have been in place for a number of years have resulted in two tiers of Critical Care and Anaesthetics accreditation, with one being accredited for the core Critical Care component/requirement of the FACEM training program; and the other as a Special Skills Placement (SSP) which has counted towards the non-ED component of the training program. This has been confusing to sites and trainees and is less than ideal.
To address this anomaly, the Council of Education has approved the removal of the ACEM-ICM SSP and ACEM-Anaesthetics SSP accreditation option.
From 2019 onwards, no new accreditation applications for ACEM-ICM SSP and ACEM-Anaesthetics SSP will be accepted.
Sites will only be accredited for either three or six months of the core Critical Care component of the FACEM training program (ACEM-ICM Critical Care or ACEM-Anaesthetics Critical Care). If a site is assessed as having met all the requirements it will be accredited for six months; if the site meets the majority but not all of the requirements, it will be accredited for three months (Please refer to the AC69 ACEM – ICM and AC408 ACEM Anaesthetics guidelines).
The Accreditation Subcommittee intends to start transitioning sites already accredited for either the ACEM-ICM SSP or ACEM Anaesthetics SSP, to the new structure in 2019. As per normal College practice, no trainees will be disadvantaged in this transitioning process. The Accreditation team will be in touch in 2019.