Book excerpt: Critical care medicine is a complex, demanding and constantly changing field. Recent changes in postgraduate medical training mean that trainees from many disciplines, including surgery, medicine and anaesthesia, are increasingly involved with the management of these challenging patients on the ward, and in high dependency units or intensive care. This book provides registrars and senior trainees in higher surgical, medical and anaesthetic training programmes with an up-to-date resource in critical care. The text provides a succinct summary of the key topics in this field, with discussion of recent advances, key papers and evidence-based practice where appropriate. The increasing role of critical care medicine in postgraduate examinations has been recognized with the inclusion of suggested viva topics in each chapter.