title: Disaster medicine training in France.
abstract: We describe the disaster medicine training program that has been developed in France by the anesthesia-reanimation specialists who provide emergency medical services. The diploma course is presented twice yearly over a two-week period to physicians of all disciplines. The 71-hour didactic program covers the background of disasters, various plans and strategies, tactics and logistics, techniques, and victim assessment and treatment. This is followed by a field exercise. Graduates then participate in a full-scale mock disaster exercise that lasts two days to one week. The development of such a course illustrates the attention that nations worldwide are giving to specialized physician training in disaster preparedness.
mesh_terms: D003479:Curriculum; D004189:Disaster Planning; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D005602:France