Modern intensive care medicine began with the use of prolonged artificial ventilation during the poliomyelitis epidemics of the 1950s and the recognition that the intensive nursing care necessary to treat these patients successfully was best provided in a separate area of the hospital with its own staff, equipment and organisation.

Intensive care began early in New Zealand - it seems likely that Dr Matthew (Matt) Spence (picture on right) began the first ICU in the Southern Hemisphere in 1958 at Auckland Hospital. The Department of Critical Care Medicine (DCCM) at Auckland Hospital is the descendant of that first ICU. The special requirements of the work and attributes of its practitioners led to the founding in 1975 of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) by Dr Spence and Dr Robert (Bob) Wright from Sydney. ANZICS provides a mechanism for close links between Intensivists (specialists in Intensive Care Medicine) and also with the specialist intensive care nurses who work in ICUs.  

Speciality training in Intensive Care Medicine began in the late 1970s in Australasia and is currently provided by the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (JFICM) of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), including Paediatrics. In late 1999 the Medical Council of New Zealand recognised Intensive Care Medicine as a separate speciality. Most specialists in intensive care medicine refer to themselves as “intensivists”. There are 48 specialists in Intensive Care Medicine (including all eight intensivists in DCCM) who are now registered with the Medical Council and practicing in New Zealand.

Stephen Streat FRACP Intensivist

Vickers Monoplace Hyperbaric Chamber	Admitting Room - circa 1980	Sechrist Monoplace Hyperbaric Chamber	East Unit ICU - circa 1980