The pre-travel consultation - an overview

Abstract

Background: Australians are great travellers and the need for travel health advice can be a common presentation in general practice. General practitioners should be an important source of accurate and up-to-date information and provide appropriate travel medicine services.

Objective: This article aims to highlight the prerequisites and underlying principles for good travel medicine practice, define the method of risk analysis at the travel medicine consultation, and discuss the main components of service provision.

Discussion: Good travel medicine service implies being able to provide accurate, up-to-date advice about health risks for travellers and appropriate provision of selected vaccines, medications, medical kits and travel health products. The travel medicine consultation is the opportunity to make a risk assessment for individual travellers based on detailed analysis of the medical history, the itinerary and other information, in order to tailor advice and treatment. General practitioners should work within their abilities and refer complex cases to travel medicine specialists.