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In 1979, care of trauma patients took a giant step forward with the inauguration of the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course.

The first chairman of the ATLS ad hoc committee for the American College of Surgeons and chairman of the Prehospital Care Subcommittee on Trauma for the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Norman E. McSwain, JR. FACS, knew that what they had begun would have a profound effect on the outcome of trauma patients. Moreover, he had a strong sense that an even greater effect could come from bringing this type of critical training to prehospital care providers.
 

Dr. McSwain, a founding member of the board of directors of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians ( NAEMT), gained support of the Association's president, Gary Labeau, and began to lay plans for a prehospital version of ATLS. President Labeau directed Dr.McSwain and Robert Nelson, NREMT-P, to determine the feasibility of an ATLS-type program for prehospital care providers.

As a professor of surgery at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. McSwain gained the University's support in putting together the draft curriculum of what was to become Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS). With this draft in place, in 1983, a PHTLS committee was established.