Travel health medicine is a fast growing and fast moving area of clinical practice. All health professionals providing travel health advice need to be familiar with current travel health issues and be able to deliver correct advice using reliable information resources tailored to the individual needs of each traveller.

More people with pre-existing illnesses or other special needs are travelling, therefore delivering advice is becoming more complex.

This new online course aims to equip new and experienced practitioners in the development of their vaccination knowledge and skills within a travel health setting.  It will provide a platform of confident practice, reflection and continuing professional development (CPD) through interactive learning with subject specialists and peers.

Course Outline

• Vaccine preventable diseases of importance to the travel health practitioner
• Accessing reliable evidence based country specific vaccine information
• The immune system and the interplay with vaccines
• Types of vaccines
• Practical aspects of administering multiple vaccines and vaccine scheduling
• Application of knowledge using travel scenarios for vaccine administration
• Factors that affect vaccine delivery including cold chain and traveller specific issues such as existing health problems.

Course Structure

Students are expected to engage 4-5 hours per week over the 5 week period.

Week 1: Introduction

An outline of the course is presented to the students. You are asked to consider the etiquette and ground rules and to develop their own online profile. A current topic in travel health will be highlighted, resources given to watch and a question asked to get you familiar with the online tools and interacting with fellow students

Week 2: Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPD):

1. Students learn about VPD: 3 different lectures.
2. You will consolidate learning by completing information about each disease studied in a standard template. Submit to class via the online tools. Moderator will provide a completed example to class once you have completed the task.
3. In week 1, you are guided to where to access online evidence based country information resources. Student groups work on a traveller scenario and completes a task using a standard template and submits to the class. The moderator will provide a completed example of answers to the class, once students have completed task.
4. Formative multiple choice questions about VPD

Week 3: How vaccines work

1. You learn using delivered recorded teaching material and other resources series and formative MCQs
2. You are tasked with producing a table of vaccines you use or might use in practice including the important details you will need to understand to enable you to inform patients about each vaccine and discussion by group/class.
3. Formative multiple choice questions about immunology and vaccine types

Week 4: Travel Vaccines

1. You will work with peers to study important details about the vaccines used in your practice or available in your country (if not currently practising travel medicine) and to summarise the important features based on a template provided. Individual and group work to produce final document.
2. Each group will be given complicated vaccine scheduling scenarios for you to attempt. Groups work together to produce model answers which is submitted to the class for review and discussion.
3. You will learn using delivered recorded teaching material about the cold chain
4. Formative multiple choice questions about the cold chain

Week 5: Advising travellers in practice

1. You will watch 3 short videos (highlighting the importance of risk assessment in a travel health consultation and illustrated with two different challenging consultations to learn from and to discuss with peers and moderator)
2. Each group of students put this learning into practice and are given complicated vaccine scenarios for each group to attempt. Groups work together to produce their model answers and submit to the class for review and discussion.
3. Formative multiple choice questions on the topics covered in the module

Online Learning

We are using an Asynchronous learning model.  Asynchronous e-learning involves recorded material and group work delivered via web (virtual learning environment), email and message boards that are then posted on online forums. In such cases, students ideally complete the course at their own pace (expected 4-5 hours per week, over the 5 weeks), by using the internet as a support tool rather than at specific online classes in real time.

Studying online is a first for many people.  This course will help you discover the skills required for online study and evaluate your own study skillset. You’ll also experience online communities and how you benefit from flexible study arrangements while still being supported by dedicated tutors.  Studying online takes advantage of technology to simulate or improve upon traditional methods of teaching.

We use a number of innovative tools to support your learning, whilst studying with us, at the centre of which is Brightspace. Brightspace brings together learners, tutors and learning materials in a simple to use web based learning management system which many students tell us is the easiest study platform they have used.  Brightspace is designed to give you easy access to everything you need to complete your studies whilst enabling you to interact with your fellow learners and be part of the wider LSTM community. Brightspace is mobile friendly and supports you even in low bandwidth settings.

LSTM also has a number of other technologies available which enable you to access video based learning resources (Panopto), easily study on your tablet device even whilst offline (Binder) and work effectively online with your peers (Wiggio). Each of these technologies has been designed to be user friendly and intuitive to use and you will have a dedicated team of staff to support you in the use of these. You will also have an Office 365 account and be able to download the latest version of Microsoft Office for the duration of your studies. 

LSTM Student Charter

General enquiries, assistance with applications and technical issues, please email mylstm@lstmed.ac.uk

If you would like to discuss something confidentially, perhaps disclose a disability, etc… please email studentsupport@lstmed.ac.uk.