Founded in 1971, the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) embraces its mission to secure the highest-quality care for all critically ill and injured patients. SCCM envisions a world in which all critically ill and injured persons receive care from a present, integrated team of dedicated and fully trained intensivists and critical care specialists. Multiprofessional teams use knowledge, technology, and compassion to provide timely, effective, safe, efficient, and equitable patient- and family-centered care.
More than 6 million people are admitted to hospital intensive care units (ICUs) in the United States every year. Nearly half of all patients admitted to the ICU are initially treated in an emergency department, and 15% require mechanical ventilation. Sepsis and septic shock, injury, and organ system failure—often multiple—are common threads uniting patients requiring critical care management. SCCM’s dedication to education and quality improvement support the multiprofessional critical care team in caring for the critically ill and injured.
Driven to better understand critical illness and further improve outcomes, SCCM’s Discovery, the Critical Care Research Network, is buttressed by the SCCM-Weil Research Trust, named for one of our founding fathers, Max Harry Weil, MD, MCCM. Both support scientific inquiry into novel therapeutics and practices focused on critical illness. Many of these discoveries can be found in the pages of Critical Care Medicine and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, our flagship professional journals. SCCM also recently released its open-access journal, Critical Care Explorations.
Active both locally and globally, SCCM partners with many other professional organizations. Among them are the Critical Care Societies Collaborative and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, in service to the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. Additionally, we share liaisons and projects with a host of other professional organizations that span the breadth of disciplines from which our members derive. At the local level, members participate in chapters, spreading education and engagement throughout a region.
Whether providing education in our Fundamentals line of courses or sharing cutting-edge knowledge at the annual Critical Care Congress, SCCM is devoted to promoting and crafting critical care excellence for patients, their families, and clinicians around the globe. We rely on, and deeply thank, the volunteer members, staff, and partners who join us in that journey to restore health and preserve wellness.
Heatherlee Bailey, MD, FCCM
SCCM President
Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine
Durham VA Medical Center
Department of Emergency Medicine
Durham, North Carolina, USA
@SCCMPresident