To use the clinical activities of an ambulance service as a tool to assess the residual and unmet medical needs of a city in the aftermath of a major earthquake and to apply that assessment to the development of a training curriculum for the prehospital personnel.

The researchers conducted structured interviews with health care workers at all levels of the emergency health care delivery system in Gyumrii, Armenia, and carried out a retrospective frequency analysis of 29,010 ambulance runs for an 11-month period from February through December 1992. Runs first were assigned into the broad categories of: 1) Adult Medical; 2) Pediatric Medical; or 3) Trauma, and then, according to diagnosis. The runs then were classified further as: 1) Primary Care; 2) Basic Life Support (BLS); or 3) Advanced Life Support (ALS).