[Transportation of patients in the prehospital phase: education of physicians].

Pre-hospital emergency medicine is developing in Switzerland. At present, however, there is no training standard for this specific and sometimes confusing aspect of extra-hospital activity. Some of the training courses which exist in other countries are recalled and the number of emergency medical transportations in Switzerland is estimated. The training programs of fourteen Swiss hospitals which cooperate with ambulance or helicopter rescue services are then presented. An enquiry by the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) among 46 physicians participating regularly in Swiss Air Rescue (REGA) helicopter operations shows the very varied pathology involved and the problems encountered in creating a training program of this kind.