A nationwide survey on the practice of young Japanese anaesthesiologist-intensivists in intensive care working

Objective and design: Currently, Japan is facing a nationwide shortage of intensivists. To provide some answers on why such shortages exist, we conducted a survey by mailing a questionnaire to young Japanese Intensive Care certified anaesthesiologists, describing their daily practice and attitudes toward the ICU environment. Subjects: A total of 303 anaesthesiologists certified by the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine (JSICM) from the year 1995 onward were evaluated; of these, 175 were members of the Japan Society of Anesthesiologists and aged 45 years and below based on the JSICM database. Questionnaires were sent to these 175 anaesthesiologistintensivists with 90 responses (51.4%) returned. Main results: Of the anaesthesia-based respondents (n =66), only 21.5% were practicing mainly as an intensivist; while 87.5% of ICU-based respondents (n =24) were practicing as an intensivist. The remaining 12.5% were practicing mainly as an anaesthetist. This gave a total of only 38.9% of the respondents p...