Tropical arboviruses: a guide for nurses in primary care part 2

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). The information collected during the risk assessment process underpins all subsequent advice relating to potential travel-related risks, recommended vaccines and malaria chemoprophylaxis suggested.

In addition to the questions suggesting by the RCN competence document, the author would emphasise the importance of a detailed history relating to previous visits to dengue endemic areas: which countries, what areas specifically within the country and for how long, history of potential exposure to dengue and other arboviruses such as Chikungunya or Zika, details of illness, potential diagnosis etc. This becomes extremely important if the advisor is considering dengue vaccine for the traveller (and may be pertinent for other arbovirus vaccines in the future).