Margaret Umeed

The Royal College of Nursing’s Travel Health Nursing: career and competence development document1 which was updated in 2023, remains the UK gold standard document pertaining to the process of risk assessment. A pre-travel risk assessment involves the collection of information from the traveller, both about themselves personally, but also about their proposed travel (see figure 1).

With the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s (ECDC) recent news item warning about the increase of mosquito-borne diseases within the EU and EEA1, the arbovirus situation is hotting up, literally, in countries not too far from the UK. Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika are perceived by many travellers, and travel advisors to be diseases of the tropics, the reality is that these diseases are now knocking on our front door.

The RCN Competency document has a formidable reputation, but does the latest edition live up to its hype? Since the publication of the very first RCN Travel Health guidance document in 2005,1 the RCN Competences have been regarded globally as The, ‘Gold Standard Guidance’, for not only nurses, but all health care professionals involved in the delivery of travel health.