Pioneer of Critical Care Medicine: Peter Safar (1924–2003)

In 2003, we were saddened by the loss of one of the great pioneers of critical care medicine: Peter Safar. He opened the first physician-staffed medical/surgical intensive care unit in the United States, and he also started the first multidisciplinary critical care medicine fellowship program in the world. A strong believer in nursing education, Safar placed nurses on the faculty of all the national critical care programs for which he was responsible. He was one of the physicians chosen to review the first CCRN examination. A wide-ranging prophet, he believed that critical care is not bound by the walls of an intensive care unit, but rather it is a discipline that begins in the community when a patient becomes acutely ill.

Safar is justly credited as the founder of modern cardiopulmonary resuscitation and cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation. His introduction of the need for training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation began in Pennsylvania at...