Acute medicine was recognised as a subspeciality of General (Internal) Medicine by the Specialist Training Authority in July 2003. In practice it had been growing as a clinical entity for over a decade and several reports have been published.1, 2, 3 The most recent Royal College of Physicians report on Acute medicine: making it work for patients4 states "Acute medicine in the UK requires the development of an academic and research base in order to support teaching and training at medical undergraduate and postgraduate level, to support basic and clinical research, to develop clinical standards, and to provide audit tools for the assessment of clinical performance."