Mastering Intensive Care

Do you play the role of the exemplary leader in the ICU? Are you charming, funny, friendly and extroverted – even when these aren’t your natural personality characteristics? Do you throw yourself into your series of consecutive days in the ICU like you are going away to adventure camp? Do you outline specific objectives that a patient should meet over a timeframe of a few days to decide whether treatment should continue? And how regularly do you talk to your patient’s family when you are pretty sure the patient is dying? These are some of the questions you may ask yourself after listening to this episode of the Mastering Intensive Care podcast with American intensivist Jack Iwashyna. This is the fifth in a series of DasSMACC special episodes, where I interviewed speakers from the recent DasSMACC conference held in Berlin. Jack is Associate Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan where he is a practicing medical intensivist at both the University of Michigan and the VA A