Three New Iranian FCCS Instructors Will Teach Regionally

The first FCCS course in Iran now brings the course’s global reach to 47 countries, including the United States. FCCS course material has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese and has served to educate more than 8600 healthcare professionals in 2009. Learn more about presenting FCCS, or its related programs – Pediatric Fundamental Critical Care Support (PFCCS) and Fundamental Disaster Management (FDM) – to your institution at www.scccm.org/fccs.  Or, contact hospital relations manager Ken Klarich at kklarich@sccm.org or +1 847 827-6401.

Critical care is a fairly new discipline in Iran, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) was proud to support the country’s first Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) instructor course this May.

Held at Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran, Janice Zimmerman, MD, FCCM, led the two-day course, attended by three intensivist physicians and one nonintensivist physician, Mahdi Malekpour, MD. The intensivist participants – Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemian, MD; Majid Malekmohammad, MD; and Hamid Reza Jamaati, MD – are considered leaders within their medical universities and hospitals and will go on to establish courses for other healthcare professionals throughout Iran.

“The program for critical care training as a specialty in Iran has only been in existence for about five years. It is fairly new to have specific critical care training, so FCCS can serve a very important need,” Zimmerman said.

Course director Reza Hashemian, an SCCM member since 2006, first learned of the FCCS course during the 38th Critical Care Congress in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

He knew it would be a useful resource in establishing critical care knowledge and skills within his country.

“I want to establish connections with the best centers and use up-to-date training,” he said. “We hope to continue to build a very close relationship with SCCM as we focus on quality care standards, education and research.”

In addition to the two-day course, Zimmerman also acted as a visiting professor, conducting several presentations on sepsis and acid/base disturbance in addition to participating in clinical case discussions, at Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and toured an Iranian intensive care unit.

Congratulations to all the participants and special thanks to Zimmerman for her efforts in spreading the important lessons of FCCS worldwide!