[Status quo of plastic surgery education in Austria]

Quality is essentially based on excellent training. Therefore, all medical disciplines in Austria, including the Plastic Surgery, have to orientate on EU-standards including efforts to adapt the surgical training. To gain an overall impression of the present training situation in Austria, an anonymous questionnaire was sent to all the 25 trainees in Plastic Surgery in summer 1995. Eight centres were involved throughout the country. The questions covered quality of training, reference departments, rotation in training, and postgraduate studies, 52% of the questionnaires were sent back. The conclusions resulting from the questionnaires are the following: unrestricted passing of plastic surgery know-how, provision of reference departments, implementation of rotation for training, carrying out of all operations listed in the EU-catalogue, regular postgraduate training. Only in this way excellently trained plastic surgeons with a strong self confidence can be a convincing counterpole to other fields of surgery which increasingly lay claim to Plastic Surgery terrain.