• Maud Bousigues, Jean-Baptiste Pretalli, Benoit Vivien, Christophe Lambert, Justin Outrey, and Abdo Khoury.
• Department of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care, Besançon University Hospital, Besançon 25030, France.
• Mil Med. 2024 Jul 19.

IntroductionTerrorist threats are a worldwide phenomenon. The injuries caused with military weapons or explosives are multiple and unusual for civilian care services. Damage control (DC) training has then become a critical need. In response to the November 2015 attacks, the French authorities launched a national DC training campaign for emergency care personnel. The aim was to describe the implementation of DC training campaign and its perception according to the respondent's profession, DC teaching levels, and the history of terrorist attacks in the last decade of the hospital center's activities.Materials And MethodsA survey was distributed to all Casualty Department staff in France. The answers were collected between June 9, 2020 and July 22, 2020. The project was qualified as not involving humans and participation was on voluntary basis. The study is out of the French Jardé law.ResultsTwo-thirds of the 1,525 respondents considered themselves trained in DC (emergency physicians [76.8%], nurse anesthetists [68.1%], and ambulance drivers [65.3%]). Less than half considered their theoretical (41.1%) and practical (44.7%) knowledge excellent or good. More than 95% of the untrained personnel wanted to receive this type of training. Trained personnel were in favor of annual refresher training (95.7%) and training for practical applications (95.1%). Personnel at teaching centers were more frequently trained than personnel at nonteaching centers (respectively 75.3% and 64.3%, P < .0001) and had applied their knowledge significantly more often (50.1% vs. 43.4%, P = .038). They often considered their knowledge to be excellent (respectively 50.8% vs. 42.4%, P = .064).ConclusionThe training of emergency personnel in DC is far from being generalized in France. Among the trained personnel, it was often deemed insufficient, in theory and in practice. There was an inequity of training in favor of those in teaching centers. It is therefore essential that training in DC techniques in France be continued, generalized, improved, and standardized throughout the country in order to guarantee an optimal response from the health care systems in the event of new terrorist attacks.© The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2024. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site–for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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