Top tips for travel health

This month Jane Chiodini shares some advice on managing travel health. Jane is a specialist nurse in travel medicine and last October became the first nurse to become Dean of the Faculty of Travel Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. Our travel health update, lead by Jane, runs on 10 July.

As the summer getaway approaches whether you’re travelling yourself or seeing many people seeking travel advice within the surgery, I’ve provided a few tips to keep you focussed on some of the key issues at the current time.

As measles outbreaks continue to cause concern around the world, it is important that those travelling to high risk areas are protected. Everyone, no matter what their age needs to have two doses of MMR recorded (or antibody proof of protection) and ImmForm stock for this can be used. We have traditionally said those born before 1970 do not need MMR as they may have had natural disease, but that consideration is no longer applicable. I have written a blog containing further information on this.

Accidents abroad are one of the most common cause of morbidity and mortality in travellers. When such an event happens, one can never be ‘over’ prepared. Here is a recent article telling the tale of one such traveller following a severe fall and the challenges which resulted in managing the medical care, insurance support, challenges of communication are just some of the points discussed as well as a helpful traveller checklist suggesting details and documentation to take on a trip – drawn up by the author to help any traveller in such an unfortunate event in the hope that the advice will help reduce the stress of any such situation. The checklist form included in the article is available as a separate page.

From 1 April 2019 NHS Resolution started operating a new state-backed indemnity scheme for general practice in England called the Clinical Negligence Scheme for General Practice (CNSGP). There has been some confusion regarding the provision of travel vaccines but updated guidance was published on 12 June clarifying that NHS travel vaccines (hepatitis A, typhoid, polio and cholera) given would be covered by the CNSGP but private travel vaccines administer would not. Therefore, additional indemnity needs to be taken out for nurses administering yellow fever, rabies Japanese encephalitis, tick borne encephaliits and hepatitis B for travel (if you charge for this). Remember though that nurses also need indemnity for other professional issues over and above NHS work carried out in a GP surgery such as employment advice, NMC referrals etc. You can read more about this in this blog entry.

Keeping up to date in travel health as with many of the topics is hard for practitioners to do who cover many topics in their day to day work. Subscribing to the news alerts from NaTHNaC on TravelHealthPro is very helpful in providing you with the latest informaiton. I also post helpful news and resources regularly on my Facebook page and the Faculty of Travel Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow have recently provided an electronic hub of free travel health resources, which includes a video update in section 3 and information about FGM in relation to a travel consultation in section 2.

GPs and practice staff may also be interested in Londonwide LMCs’ new GP State of Emergency resource, which provides a poster and guidance to manage requests to certify patients to fly while pregnant.

Last updated : 19 Jun 2019

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