The World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine (WFSIC- CM) has
reached the age of maturity. Physicians nurses and many others associated with the field of
Intensive and Critical Care Medicine will be coming from all corners of the world to Florence
Italy in August 2009 to celebrate the 10th quadrennial congress. Every 4 years for the last 36
years congresses in the magnificent venues of London (1973) Paris (1977) Washington (1981)
Jerusalem (1985) Kyoto (1989) Madrid (1993) Ottawa (1997) Sydney (2001) and Buenos Aires
(2005) have sig- fied an ever-developing process which has resulted in the four pillars of the
field of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine namely partnership ethics professionalism and
competence. The first pillar is based on a stronger interdisciplinary collaboration and a mul-
professional partnership in the field of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine. In recent
decades professional activity in medicine has been regulated by well-defined universal
principles such as the welfare of the patient autonomy social justice and the
patient¿physician relationship. The second pillar ethics has offered welcomed assistance to
all these principles in establishing an ethics curriculum.
