Over the past two years, the Swiss Institute for Postgraduate and Further Education in Medicine has implemented a new certification in addiction medicine and an in-depth training in addiction psychiatry and psychotherapy. These developments contribute to the recognition of a specialty and the training of a new generation of specialized clinicians. This context leads to the question of the role and the skills to be passed on to non-specialists when taking care of drug addiction. This article focuses on the importance of preparing non-specialized clinicians in the hospital setting and presents two prerequisites for improving their training: to explore clinicians' field experience and to make the individual and institutional actors aware of their responsibility.