What does the Diploma involve?

© James Austin 2002
Last updated 1 May 2006

There are three components to the Diploma:

• The Educational Training Record (ETR): This consists of a summary of your training placements, outlining roughly the range of clinical cases and practical skills covered; and ten case reports of about 1000 words each. These should be cases that taught you something interesting about ICU Medicine. They have to be formatted to a set structure: Clinical problem; Relevant Management; Further information (i.e. general discussion of the case and relevant literature); How would you change future management; and References (maximum 5).

• The Dissertation: This is a paper of 4000 - 6000 words, consisting of either a critical review of an intensive-care topic, or of original research relating to intensive care. The majority of candidates so far have done 'review' dissertations, but a few have presented extracts from prior research work. The topic for the dissertation needs to be approved in advance (deadline about five months ahead of the exam) by the IBTICM. The deadline for the dissertation itself is about two months ahead of the exam. If the dissertation is not up to scratch the IBTICM can refuse to invite you to the exam (but they only refund half your entrance fee!). Candidates with previous research theses (e.g. MD or PhD) can now apply to the IBTICM for exemption from the dissertation component.

• The Exam: This is all vivas (oral exams) - no written papers, no OSCEs! You do five vivas in three hours:

1. A one-hour viva on your dissertation
2. A one-hour viva covering your ETR case reports, general clinical scenarios and data interpretation.
3. Two half-hour vivas on general ICU topics

You must pass the dissertation viva, and at least two of the other three vivas.

All this and more are to be found in the official DICM Regulations on the IBTICM website.