Good Practice Guidance for a Travel Health Service

Introduction

For travel health or travel medicine - my area of specialist practice, the impact of COVID-19 has been devastating for different reasons for those working in this field full time.  In the main people have stopped travelling so there are very few travellers to see who would have previously required advice and where there is demand, this is currently largely for COVID testing for travel.  Even if you undertake travel health as a small part of your daily workload, as many will in General Practice, there is little demand.  Jobs are at risk in many related areas for travel health (e.g. the specialist private travel clinics, staff in vaccine divisions of pharmaceutical companies).  Vast stocks of vaccines approaching their 'expire by date' will be wasted, a huge economic loss, and I've heard of no real solution to this and certainly no compensation unless the owner has specific valid insurance.  Specialist travel services operating in the private sector have the skills to immunise with all the required knowledge and yet to date, I've seen little co-ordination to consider using this taskforce to assist in the massive operation needed to administer the NHS flu vaccination campaign or to help in the future campaign to vaccinate the millions of people when a COVID-19 vaccine hopefully becomes available. 

What is the Faculty of Travel Medicine?

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow are the only College in the Northern Hemisphere to have a Faculty of Travel Medicine (FTM).  We are a small group of subject experts in travel medicine. The mission of the FTM surrounds concern for education and standards.  More details can be found here. If you become a Fellow, Member or Associate of the Faculty you are awarded a post nominal qualification, signifying your level of expertise, but entry must be demonstrated to allow this.  We also have another category of Affiliate, which is open to anyone interested in the subject.  The fee for this is far smaller but allows the individual to benefit from the educational opportunities the Faculty provides.  

This was our stand at the RCN/NaTHNaC conference in February 2020

I referred in the last paragraph to the FTM as 'we'.  This is because I was involved in the development of this body in 2011 - the Faculty came into existence in 2012.  I am the fifth Dean (the Leader of the group) but I held many other positions before this and I am the first nurse and first female to become the Dean, which spans a term of three years.  We all work in our roles unpaid, but this is standard practice in any body such as a medical Royal College because the work is about having a passion to utilise one's experience to develop the subject, support other practitioners and improve standards of care for our patients.  I'm immensely proud to hold this role and since COVID-19 resulted in losing all my face to face teaching work, I've focussed on FTM work full time.  The FTM comprises doctors, pharmacists and there are many nurses who belong and have qualifications in the subject.  On International Nurses Day this year, I put a photo together with images of some of them - I'm so proud to be part of this group and many of them are active in the FTM work!  

NEWS !  Good Practice Guidance for Providing a Travel Health Service

So it was with immense pleasure that I announced a document at our AGM last Friday, 'GOOD PRACTICE GUIDANCE FOR PROVIDING A TRAVEL HEALTH SERVICE'.  It may seem a strange time to launch such a publication but this has actually been in development for two years before any of us had any idea what was around the corner!  Standards of care for travel health in the UK are variable.  In the introduction of the document it states 'The FTM considers the most important aspect of delivering travel health care is not which professional group delivers the care, but that each person doing so exceeds the minimum standard of practice and meets the health needs of the traveller'. 

Click on the image above to access the document. or here

Overview of content 

The document sets out expected standards of practice in four key areas

1. Service Delivery
2. Operating/Facility Requirements for a Travel Service
3. Assurance and Governance of Travel Health Services
4. Recomendations for the Practice of Travel Medicine 

The fourth section is supported by two appendices to further enhance standards and training 

• Appendix B provides an example of a practitioner assessment tool for competency in travel health
• Appendix C lists the training requirements in travel medicine. 

Other helpful reources.  

At the end of the document is a 12 page 'booklet' of really useful resources followed by a patient leaflet to help the traveller understand WHAT they should expect to experience within a travel health consultation.  This patient leaflet  is also available as a single downloadable item.  

Other helpful tips

If you download the document, many features have been added to help you navigate the 52 pages. All the links in the index both on page 5 and on page 39 have been hyperlinked to the sections within the publication to make it easy to get to the sections without having to scroll down all the time.  And if you click on any resource that has a weblink, if you press Ctrl then click the link, the page should open in a separate tab if you're using browsers such as Google Chrome or Internet Explorer.  

The competency tool is also available as an editable Word document so that you can keep a 'living' and 'virtual' record of the competencies you develop.  This is especially important for new learners but also useful to use as you develop your skills and determine the further training and learning skills you need.    

Conclusion 

Despite the current Global Pandemic, many similar situations have happened in the past and in due course travel will be very popular again, indeed it may be busier than ever and I hope then travellers will be increasingly more aware of the advice they need to take to protect their health.  So to prepare for that situation, it is important that practitioners are properly trained and prepared.  This document supports this aim, to ensure the future safety of our travellers is catered for and practitioners practice safely within their professional codes of conduct.