Overlooked Considerations When Caring For Travelling Staff

From our Travel Clinic, Doctor TED LANKESTER, Nurse JO THOMPSON and Psychosocial & Wellbeing Lead BEN PORTER share things they wish more of our clients knew.

1. Good healthcare for travelling staff is a legal obligation. It might sound obvious, but it is frequently overlooked, which can lead to disastrous consequences. In one high-profile case, an employee sued her company for contracting dysentery during a work trip, she successfully argued that they failed to provide proper vaccinations and preventative health advice beforehand. 

2. Good travel health support matters on a person’s first trip, and their fiftieth. The world is changing all the time, and so too are the risks. None of us as individuals stay the same either: our health issues and life experiences determine travel considerations. This is why even the most experienced humanitarian, aid and mission workers often tell us how much they appreciate seeing one of our team before they travel. They value the care given, they learn self-awareness, and they develop practical ways to look after themselves. 

3. Travelling to a new environment can present health challenges you might not have considered. We could give endless examples of this: mood-altering medication taken for a mental health condition can be legal in a person’s own country, but illegal in the country to which they travel; asthma can be harder to manage in a dusty country or area with low air quality; diabetes may be harder to manage in a country with a different diet and environment. These are exactly the kind of challenges our Travel Clinic can advise on.

4. If you want to know how someone will fare on their travels, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. A change of role and location can be hard. It can be harder still to predict how someone will fare. But a person’s ability to adapt or bounce back can be developed – it first just needs to be understood. In a Resilience Questionnaire & Consultation we help prepare individuals to care for their wellbeing as they embark on a challenging, new role. They’ll understand their strengths better and prepare for what’s to come. And it will give the employer the knowledge and confidence to support them too.

5. Our medical assessments can uncover health problems with implications for an imminent assignment. Recently, in one week of seeing patients who were soon to travel, we made two unexpected findings in two apparently healthy people. The first was a healthy man in his 30s who was found to have diabetes, despite having no symptoms. The second was an older healthy man with no relevant symptoms found to have prostate cancer. Both went on to receive the support they needed.

6. Sometimes simple things can help a person stay resilient when working in a difficult place. It’s not all rocket science. A client got in touch once to say: “I’m so glad you suggested I take my yoga mat to Ukraine!”. In a new place, establishing a routine that prioritises wellbeing, and incorporates some routines from home, can be an effective way to safeguard physical and mental wellbeing.

7. It’s surprisingly easy to ignore simple ways to stay healthy when travelling. Before they go, we often remind people to pay especially close attention to their basic needs e.g. drinking enough safe water, getting enough sleep, taking any regular medication on time; staying out of the hot sun; taking common-sense precautions on transport as traffic accidents are one of the most common causes of health problems, and death, among travellers.

8. A chance to reflect after a trip is important. When returning home it can be hard to readjust. If the work was demanding, in a high risk location, or in an unfamiliar culture, it can leave someone with a lot to process. Even for routine trips, there can be plenty to reflect upon. What was the hardest part? How have you changed? Did you have to develop any coping strategies? These are all questions that we ask people after they return home in a Psychosocial Debrief. Whether they plan to settle ‘back home’ or rest in between deployments, it can help them reflect, take stock, and decide what’s next. 

9. Small health problems can often occur whilst travelling which may not seem significant at first, but can slowly worsen. The earlier any medical issue is discovered the better. And this is why if your organisation routinely deploys staff to different parts of the world, then we recommend that your duty of care policy makes provision both for a health appointment before leaving, the option of telemedicine support when they are away, and also medical care on return. One huge benefit of this: seeing the same doctor before, during and after travelling.

10. If organisations don’t follow the requirements of their insurance company, they risk invalidating their insurance. If you send someone to a country in a malarial region and they don’t take their antimalarial medication, the insurance provider could refuse to pay out and to provide the further support that’s needed. So if in doubt, seek travel health advice.

Are you or someone in your team travelling soon? Explore all of our travel services here.