ETHREAT is a European Public Health Project launched in May 2005 funded by the European Commission. The aim of ETHREAT is to plan and develop an educational package containing the knowledge and training material necessary to empower European health professionals, including armed forces health personnel, to rapidly recognise and adequately respond to new public health threats, like attacks with biological, chemical and radiological agents.

Before designing the training programme the project team needs to address a number of important questions, including:

• What training programmes are currently available?
• Do these programmes meet the needs of attendees?
• What should be the educational objectives of a new training programme?
• What should be the content of a new training programme?

You have been identified as an individual with expert knowledge in this area, and we would be very grateful if you could take some time to complete this questionnaire, and assist us in addressing some (if not all) of these questions. We are primarily interested in learning about the experience of Front-Line Health Professionals (in your country), and their ability to deal with chemical, biological, and radiological incidents. We are also interested in your views on any training that may be available for Front-Line Health Professionals which enables them to deal with such incidents.

Completing the questionnaire should not take more than 10-15 minutes of your time.

NOTE:

• All information that you provide here will be treated in the strictest confidence, and these details will not be distributed to any individual or organisation, other than within the project team.  We will be writing several reports for the European Commission, and these reports may at some point be available in the public domain. However, please note that these reports will contain only summary data. Your name will NOT appear in any report.
• The working language of this project is English, so please ensure that answers are provided in English.

DEFINITIONS

Front-Line Health Professional: for the purposes of the ETHREAT project we refer to medical practitioners and nursing staff in civilian or military facilities, especially those working in emergency departments or in primary healthcare, Public Health Officials especially at the local level and Emergency Medical Services personnel.

CBRN: initials from the words Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear. Although the ETHREAT project does not address nuclear threats, the term is the one more constantly used in relation to incidents involving chemical, biological and radioactive agents especially used deliberately to harm.

Deliberate: initiated by a person or group of persons with harmful intent; intentional, not natural.