The Basic Assessment & Support in Intensive Care (BASIC) collaboration is an informal grouping of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine specialists with an interest in the development and dissemination of high quality, free course teaching material to teach clinicians intensive and acute care. It was founded in 2004 by members of the Department of Anaesthesia & Intensive Care at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and led by Prof. Charles Gomersall. This material is produced primarily in the form of short courses focusing on different topics or groups of students/professionals working with severely ill patients. All courses are generic and standardized (teaching material is produced in sufficient detail to be to be teachable, in-situ, by trained local instructors). To date all courses follow the same format: 1-3 day courses consisting of a course manual for pre-course reading, pre-course test, short lectures focusing on application of knowledge gained from pre-course reading, skill stations and a post-course test. All course material is provided free of charge (in an electronic format) and there are no license fees for running courses. The courses are disseminated using a train the trainer model. Educational material for all courses is updated on a regular basis, at least annually.

In excess of 350 courses are taught per year and our course have been taught in over 70 countries

Venues of BASIC Collaboration courses since 2004

A summary of individual courses is given in the table below.

Name	Target audience	Content
BASIC	Novice intensive care doctors	Introduction to intensive care with a focus on resuscitation and organ support, especially mechanical ventilation
BASIC for Nurses	Novice intensive care nurses	Introduction to intensive care with a focus on resuscitation and organ support, especially mechanical ventilation
Paediatric BASIC	Novices PICU doctors	Introduction to PICU with a focus on monitoring and organ support, especially mechanical ventilation
BASIC Patient Safety	Bedside clinicians   (medical and nursing)	Patient Safety concepts with an emphasis on how clinicians can improve Patient Safety
Very BASIC	Medical students and junior doctors	Care of critically ill patients outside ICU
BASIC Low Resource (BASIC LR)	Doctors working in low resource settings	Care of critically ill patients in low resource settings. Developed at the request of and in collaboration with Medecins sans Frontieres, Paris.
BASIC LR for Nurses	Nurses working in low resource settings	Nursing care of critically ill patients in low resource settings. Developed at the request of and in collaboration with Medecins sans Frontieres, Paris.
BASIC Sciences	Intensive care trainees	Basic sciences underlying Intensive Care (course material in development)
Beyond BASIC Cardio-cerebral Resuscitation	Doctors involved in cardiac resuscitation	Advanced cardiac life support
Beyond BASIC Mechanical Ventilation	Intermediate-advanced Intensive Care trainees      (or refresher for specialists)	Mechanical ventilation of critically ill patients
Beyond BASIC Intensive Care Nephrology	Intermediate-advanced Intensive Care trainees     (or refresher for specialists)	Nephrology relevant to Intensive Care, including renal replacement therapy
Beyond BASIC Airway Management	Intermediate-advanced Intensive Care trainees     (or refresher for specialists)	Airway management in the critically ill including use of advanced airway techniques
Beyond BASIC Cardiothoracic Intensive Care	Intermediate-advanced Intensive Care trainees     (or refresher for specialists)	Management of immediate post operative and critically ill cardiothoracic patients
BASIC Transthoracic Echocardiography	Doctors and healthcare workers interested in learning basic Focused Cardiac Ultrasound. No prior experience required.

Doctors and nurses interested in running our courses should click here

Publications related to BASIC Collaboration courses –

1. Douglas A, Holley A, Udy A, Lipman J, Gomersall CD, Joynt GM, Freebairn RC, Boots R. Can learning to sustain life be BASIC? Teaching for the initial management of the critically ill in Australia and New Zealand. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, 2010; 38:1043-51
   
   
2. P. C. Gruber, C. D. Gomersall, G. M. Joynt, F. M. Shields, M. C. Chu, J. L. Derrick, and for the Very BASIC development group. Teaching acute care: a course for undergraduates. Resuscitation 74:142-149, 2007.


3. C. D. Gomersall, P. Lam, and G. M. Joynt. Electronic interactive learning to supplement acute care teaching. Medical Education 44:526, 2010.
   Joynt GM, Zimmerman J, Li TS, Gomersall CD. A systematic review of short courses for nonspecialist education in intensive care. Journal of Critical Care. 2011 Oct;26(5):533.e1-533.e10.


4. Wong WT, Ling L, Gomersall CD. Making critical care education BASIC: A collaborative approach to training. ICU Management & Practice. 2017;17(4):216-9. https://iii.hm/fay