As the summer winds down, many of us will pack our overnight bags with bathing suits, walking shoes, beach reads, and of, course, a little black dress! But don’t forget to prepare yourself for any medical mishaps that may happen while you’re away from home.
Follow these seven useful tips from The Black Dress Traveler’s favorite medical professional, Mary Stein (RN, NP-C). She is a Nurse Practitioner based in New York City specializing in Primary Care & Travel Medicine. Mary offers more travel medicine advice and complete travel medicine consultations (including yellow fever vaccination) at Plaza East Internal Medicine in Manhattan. Call 212-750-7404 to make an appointment or you can reach Mary at marystein4@gmail.com.
1. Before you travel, be honest with yourself about your health status. Are you well enough to travel? Have you had a recent physical exam or annual check-up? You may want to talk to your primary care provider before planning your excursion.
2. Plan your itinerary. Then, have other people –friends, family, colleagues, people who’ve been on the vacation that you’re planning - look it over. An overly-ambitious itinerary can make for a very tired (and thus, accident-prone) traveler.
3. See a travel medicine expert for a consultation prior to any foreign travel. A trained travel medicine expert will prepare you with the immunizations and medications you need to protect you from everything from hepatitis to malaria to altitude sickness.
4. Find out and take with you: the addresses and phone numbers of the clinics, hospitals, and the U.S. embassy nearest where you are staying, the numbers to call in case your wallet/credit cards get stolen, and the numbers for your insurance company.
5. Bring your U.S. health insurance card and information with you. Call your health insurer; find out if they will cover you overseas in the event of an emergency. Don’t let their answer influence your decision to buy travel insurance. You should!
6. Buy travel insurance. It may seem like an unnecessary expense. Again, accidents and emergencies happen (even if you are doing all this preparation to try to prevent them!). The small amount of extra cash you’ll spend will be so worth it if it means you’ll be reimbursed for a cancelled vacation or if you need medical assistance or evacuation during your trip.
7. Consider sleeping aids. This may seem a strange thing to put on a list of “how to avoid travel emergencies.” Here’s why it’s here: many emergencies occur because of jet-lag or lack of sleep. Simple use of sleeping aids will assist you to combating jet-lag, getting into the local time rhythm, and beating fatigue. There are several prescription sleep aids that do not cause morning hangover. In addition, some over-the-counter medicines (like Benadryl) work just fine for many people. I suggest you “test drive” your sleeping medication prior to your excursion.
