[Territorial emergency: physician or nurse?]

This study was conceived to assess a pattern of Italian prehospital critical care team, especially referring to the advanced life support (ALS) rescue team. Function and management of ALS rescue team and its relationship with other members of the emergency medical system (intra hospital physician, basic life support team, general practitioner) are analysed; stress is laidon the knowledge, the background and the complexity of the emergency procedures. The benefit of 2 major prehospital options of the ALS team, composed by 1 physician and 1 nurse staffing or by 2 trained nurse staffing, is discussed; the importance of educational programs for ambulance teams, a comparison of cost-effectiveness and the number of emergency teams availability is underlined. The authors, finally emphasize the advantages of a territorial coverage with an integrated system of ambulances staffed with specially trained rescuers or technicians, ambulances with rescuers and nurses, and ALS teams staffed with emergency physician and 1 nurse (integrated or not with ambulances with 2 trained nurses), being perfectly capable to face up any background in pre-hospital emergency medicine setting.