Assessing the RCN Competency document on travel health – a response

The review entitled ‘Assessing the RCN Competency document on travel health’¹ published in July’s Independent Nurse, gave the publication an overall good end-of-term report card, but included many criticisms to which as one of the authors of this RCN document, I would like to respond.   

Telephone consultation is well established in primary and secondary care and convenient for service users.  Some consultations do turn out to be unsatisfactory, but that can apply whether conducted in person, by secure video link, or by telephone. Furthermore, there is support for remote consultations amongst users for the convenience they offer and most pre-travel attenders do not need to be examined.  The issue here is to optimise the consultation using new technology, rather than push back against its use.  Indeed, in many remote parts of Scotland for example, consultations using modern communication technology have been standard practice for some years.²