What Is Travel Medicine?
How Do You Prepare For A Travel Medicine Appointment ?
Why Is Travel Medicine Practiced?
Travel medicine specialists can also provide general information about staying healthy while traveling, such as best practices for eating and drinking, and avoid local hazards.
Whether you’re traveling for business or for pleasure, a visit to a travel medicine specialist can be an essential addition to your trip planning. Our travel medicine experts can help you and your family make the right decisions for staying healthy while you’re seeing the world.
Travel medicine specialists are concerned with all the health-related aspects of travel for children and adults of all ages. While most people might visit a travel medicine doctor before a trip, specialists in this kind of medicine also treat people for any travel-related health problems they might have after they return home.
What Can You Expect During A Travel Medicine Appointment?
To help you prepare for your trip, your travel medicine doctor may ask about your destination and any side trips you might be likely to take. That helps to plan the kind of destination-specific vaccinations you may need or to discuss other kinds of health precautions you might need to take, such as treatments for diarrhea or insect bites. Your doctor may suggest other strategies relevant to your circumstances, such as safe sex planning or health precautions related to the specific activities you plan to do, like scuba diving or hiking.
Depending on your destination, you may need certain vaccinations against locally common diseases such as malaria, or to update vaccinations you’ve had in the past for diseases such as varicella (chicken pox), tetanus or rubella. Some countries require certifications for certain vaccinations, or documentation that travelers are free of medical conditions such as AIDS, and your travel medicine specialist can sign off on these documents for you.
When Should You Schedule Your Travel Vaccination Appointment?
Scheduling your pre-travel consultation well in advance of your trip allows for time to recover from any vaccine side effects and ensure that you’ve acquired the necessary immunity to avoid illness during your trip. If possible, talk to your doctor about three months before your trip to ensure that you fully understand which vaccines you’ll need and to give enough time for each of them to take full effect.
What Is The Follow Up To A Travel Medicine Appointment?
Pre-travel vaccinations will hopefully prevent you from developing an illness during your trip, but if you do become sick while traveling or after returning, we can schedule a follow-up appointment to diagnose and treat your illness.
