I’ve heard some people get asked to do an ITU attachment after their PYA. There isn’t anything about this in the ARCP decision aid. How much ITU experience do I need?

The curriculum requirement that you have ITU experience is one of the PYA external assessor’s checklist requirements, but there is a degree of flexibility. Resp trainees who’ve done 6 months ITU will be fine. Your SHO post in ITU from 7 years ago won’t count though. What the PYA panel will want to know is if you’ve had enough HDU training and ITU exposure at registrar level (including co-managing patients on ITU) to be comfortable in this setting as a consultant. This will often depend on your specialty and what the placements you’ve had do in terms of ITU (closed or collaborative). Typically if you haven’t had much of this, external assessors will recommend a 2-week ITU attachment, which is often quite useful and interesting.

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