This descriptive study explored barriers and difficulties faced by an international disaster relief team from China, which took part in two types of international disaster relief missions.

Data was collected since the founding of the Chinese international disaster relief team, including information on team composition, operational hours, and average number of patients rescued and treated by staff per day, etc.

Overall, thirteen disaster relief missions utilizing the Chinese disaster relief team occurred in eight countries. All the operations were divided into two kinds of models: Urban Search and Rescue mission, and Emergency Medical service. The first model consisted of search, rescue, and emergency medical services on site. The ratio of medical staff on the team accounted for 18.8%. According to the six international health-based operations, the team was deployed ten days following the disaster, with an average working time of 17.8 days, and benefiting around 6,812 wounded and sick persons per operation. Compared with these two models, medical-based operations deployed more staff after the disaster and had a longer window of operation. The beneficiaries of medical-based operations are ten times greater than those of rescue-based operations. The differences are distinct.

Missions will better meet the needs of international relief by enhancing organizational coordination among medical teams around the world, and by contributing to the communication between teams. They will further benefit from technical capacity building, regional coordination trainings, formatting the standard of teaming building, and evaluation of the work.