The Story So Far
2025 marks the 15th anniversary of FICM
In that time, we have grown the intensive care workforce, pioneered the definitive reference source for our specialty in GPICS, embedded frameworks to support professional development across our diverse membership and driven Fellowship of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FFICM) examinations.
We’ve appreciated the support of our eight parent colleges – and especially that of our host and lead parent the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) which has backed our case to become independent.
Forming the College of Intensive Care Medicine (CICM) will reflect the identity of intensive care medicine as a distinct and growing specialty. We are following the same journey as other faculties who similarly outgrew their parent colleges, with recent examples including both the RCoA and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
Our Timeline to Independence
On 24 October 2022, the then newly-elected Dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, Dr Daniele Bryden, announced FICM’s intention to become an independent College of Intensive Care Medicine.
As a maturing specialty, it is inevitable that ICM looks to its own future as an independent college which directly represents the interests of its fellows and members and the patients we treat. We do not anticipate that this work will be quick, nor without hurdles to clear, but we want our Fellows and members and the wider ICM community to be engaged with and inform every step of the process.
Fast forward to April 2025, FICM announced it has achieved important regulatory milestones and demonstrated its readiness to operate on an equal footing with other specialty-specific Medical Colleges. The Board of Trustees of lead parent college the RCoA has now approved FICM’s case for independence - consequently FICM has set a date of 1 July 2026 to become the College of Intensive Care Medicine.
Since its establishment in 2010, a date that also marked almost 20 years of development of ICM as a multidisciplinary professional identity, FICM has matured as a faculty of eight parent Royal Medical Colleges.
Dr Bryden said:
We have achieved so much as a Faculty; now it’s time to look to the future of the specialty and a College of ICM that represents us all. We have already been acting as a College in many of our functions, and the change will give intensive care medicine the external visibility to allow us to do more for our members, the specialty and our patients.
Relevant resources
- FICM set to become the College of Intensive Care Medicine in July 2026 (9 April 2025)
- Critical Eye, Winter 2025:
FICM Independence: Working away in the background p7-8
FICM Independence: Navigating a way forward p 9-10 - Critical Works, August 2024:
FICM’s statutory role, advocacy, history, rationale for independence p3-5
Process, survey results, Q&A, member engagement, benefits for members p6-7 - New FICM Dean aims for independent College of ICM (24 Oct 2022)
Do you want to know more?
Discover the history of the Faculty.
