Educational and Professional Development Activities

The ISTM offers a number of activities and products, both as member benefits and for sale, to help enhance your travel medicine practice. These are in addition to the ISTM Meetings covered elsewhere.

TravelMed, the ISTM Listserv, is a forum for discussion of individual clinical cases, patient management issues, guidelines for clinical care, and educational/training opportunities. It is an active ISTM member benefit with participation from over 3000 travel medicine professionals around the world. It has become the cornerstone of the ISTM members’ only online portal, My ISTM. In addition to offering members the opportunity to easily communicate with colleagues around the world, it also offers access to special travel medicine alerts, links to important resources, members only discussion groups, publications, educational products, and much more.

The ISTM PowerPoint teaching slide set, Introduction to Travel Medicine, is suitable for lecturing to both healthcare professionals and lay groups. Slides are now in four chapters (Introduction to Travel Medicine, Travel Topics and Special Conditions, Travel Vaccines, and Vector-borne Diseases) for easy customization with a total of 189 slides. Material and teaching points are international in scope, allowing the presenter to elaborate on specific local dosing and availability issues. You can purchase just the chapter you are looking for or all four for a discount.

ISTM established an Online Learning Program capturing individual sessions from the Travel Medicine and Review Courses as well as from the International Conferences of the ISTM and have made them available through the internet. Topics are relevant to all travel medicine practitioners, with both introductory and more advanced content. Offering both video with synchronized slides, and audio with synchronized slides, individual sessions range from 30 minutes to four hours. There are over 100 sessions currently available.

The ISTM Professional Education Committee is pleased to promote the ISTM Member Benefit Webinar Program. These webinars are provided at no cost to ISTM Members who register. Member Benefit Webinars will be scheduled periodically throughout the year so watch the ISTM website for the latest information!  For access to already presented webinars visit the Member Benefit page of the ISTM website.

The ISTM Travel Medicine Review and Update Courses provide the most current and relevant information needed by physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals who provide medical care and advice to travellers, expatriates, and migrants. Many attendees come every year to hear the latest information and remain current in their practices. The Course provides a thorough update and review of the Body of Knowledge for the practice of travel medicine and assists in preparation for the CTH® exam and will sometimes offer a mock test. Participants have ample opportunities to interact with the faculty through question and answer sessions and informal discussions.

ISTM also offers educational materials suitable for distribution to patients and travellers as member benefits. These include a narrative document entitled The Responsible Traveller, which is translated into a number of languages.

Another member benefit is the ISTM Educational Patient Cases (formerly Expert Opinions), a series of educational vignettes, presenting a pre-or post-travel quandary that is addressed by a leading clinician. The Professional and Education Committee (PEC) of ISTM has recently added a new educational venue called "Challenging Cases – Voice Your Opinion" as part of the ISTM Travel Medicine News publication. These interesting topics and discussion will now be added to the Educational Cases Section of the ISTM website. The international membership of ISTM offers the opportunity to explore varied clinical approaches, and the cases provide opinions and discussions; however, they should not be taken as a directive for all patients or cases. The PEC encourages ISTM members to discuss additional aspects relating to any of these cases and scenarios on the TravelMed Listserv.

The ISTM resource monograph "Beginning and Operating a Travellers' Health Clinic" provides information and advice to travel medicine practitioners who plan to establish or are currently operating a travel clinic. This monograph is only available to ISTM members.