Whether you've traveled before or not, living and working overseas can be challenging. Learn how best to prepare and make the most of your time internationally. This course will prepare you to work and live overseas. It explores the epidemiology of common morbidity and mortality among travelers and examines key prevention, safety, and travel medicine principles and services to contextualize risks and maintain wellness. The course reviews applicable interventions, appropriate vaccines, and personal protection methods to prepare you to respond to expected and unexpected situations and will challenge you to examine travel health and safety priorities through case studies and discussions. The Honors Lesson will assist you with personal preparations for travel through the creation of a country-specific profile.
Looking After Yourself
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From the course by Johns Hopkins University
International Travel Preparation, Safety, & Wellness
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From the lesson
Staying Safe
In this module, we'll cover strategies for staying safe while traveling, measures you can take to minimize risk, as well as specific advice for women and LGBT travelers.
Meet the Instructors
Anna KalbarczykResearch Associate
International Health
Well, welcome back, and this last section here is looking after yourself to deal
with some of the particular issues that might affect people in some locations.
One of the first things to talk about is job stress.
This is kind of a diagram that looks at things and many people work in stressful
situations and that maybe what you're experiencing when you're working overseas.
You might find the temperature is warm,
the climate is humid, the environment is not something you're used to.
So there is some external kind of job stresses as well and
then you may have some individual factors that affect you.
You've just found that your favorite uncle has been hospitalized or
you've broken up with your boyfriend or your girlfriend.
Various things that affect you personally and that's an additive or
sometimes multiplicative factor, and as a result from that
you may end up with illness, or the risk of injury may be greater.
So there's a number of ways job stress
can affect your performance when you're working overseas.
And there's a number of different signs that we can look at and
this is not by any means an exhaustive discussion of this particular topic, but
you may have different expectations from a job than reality has provided you with.
So this is going to be a different situation than
you thought you were getting into.
And this creates its own type of stresses maybe you don't have the particular skills
or the particular competencies that you would like to have for this,
that may make you less effective than you would be otherwise.
And it also makes you potentially less watchful.
So things can happen that you wouldn't catch or subtle clues that
there may be some problems evolving and you might have missed these completely.
Here are some common manifestations of how this could affect you.
Physically, you can feel fatigued, you can be exhausted.
Some people get hyper active, may have difficulty sleeping.
There may be some symptomatic signs such as headaches and backaches and so forth.
Behavioral characteristics, we've seen this happen many times.
Substance is often abused.
It might be alcohol.
It might be other things.
Dangerous driving, the irresponsible sexual relationships are well know,
as a result of some of these stresses that affect behavior.
And there's a number of emotional things that can affect our mood, can affect our
attitude toward things, we become pessimistic or cynical are irritable.
And it also makes us poor communicators.
Whatever good interpersonal relationship skills we had,
we may lose some of those when the job is producing a lot of stress for us.
So let's think a little bit about what are some of the ways that we can manage this.
First off, we know this is going to happen and
we should have a careful eye on other people.
So we might not detect personally when this is coming on, but other people might
see it as a change in our behavior or a change in our skills or our abilities.
So as other people are watching it for you,
you should be watching it for other people.
Some of the things that can help are having regular habits,
adequate sleeping habits, adequate eating, work habits in an appropriate manner and
avoid alcohol and other substances that may make things worse in this situation.
And many people will turn to alcohol to try to deal with it,
with the job stresses, and the consequences are even greater.
It's really important to have some type of physical activities.
It may be joining the frisbee league, or it might be doing salsa dancing, or
it might be just walking with other people but some type of physical exercise,
and then thinking about some type of group activities as well.
Whether it's belonging to sport's clubs, or religious groups, or the local
historical society, or something that gets you involved with other people as well.
And then it's also important to think about
how do you create strong relationships with other people?
You may have come to a situation as somebody who's used to working all on
their own and not working as a team and then you're in a team environment.
So it's important to maybe change the way you think about things and how you work.
And then thinking about taking time off.
Almost any country you go to has lots of interesting sights that you'd like to see.
Assuring, of course, that they're safe to travel there.
Taking breaks, taking weekends off,
long weekends, travelling to a neighboring country for a few days.
A very common way to break up the tension and monotony of a particular job and
dealing with the stress.
And then realizing you have limitations, you may have thought,
because ended at the top of your class in biostatistics,
that you're invincible but even you have limitations.
And acknowledge these and to realize that you yourself need to take some breaks and
you can't run indefinitely as some perpetual motion machine.
Now, one of the areas that potentially causes a lot of concern to people
is the area of sexual assaults.
Some places are much more bisque at this and than others, so
it's hard to generalize different locations.
But sexual assaults can be defined as intentional sexual contact,
characterized by use of force or physical threat or
abuse of authority when the victim does not or can not consent.
And that includes people that are intoxicated, as unable to consent.
These tend to happen fairly shortly after people arrive in a new location.
Before they have all the signals, before they understand the situation,
other people will take advantage of them, because they're not aware of things.
Generally, the person who's responsible for
the sexual assault is known to the person who's being assaulted.
It's always often somebody in the office or somebody in the building or
somebody in the neighborhood and they've been looking and planning for this.
This is not just an opportunity that came out of the blue,
this is a premeditated type of activity that's going on as a rule.
There may be some stalking involved and very, very commonly,
whenever there are sexual assaults there's alcohol involved in some way or another.
So there's a number of things we can look at right here to be careful about.
One of the ways to try to deal with this is a preventative activity is knowing
what your limits are, what you will tolerate and what you will not accept.
And as we've mentioned earlier on, use your instinct.
So what feels right, what feels wrong,
what feels like we're getting into areas that you don't want to go into.
And be alert to what's happening around you.
And then again, as we've mentioned, things that dumb down your senses,
things that reduce your watchfulness,
such as alcohol or drugs, are things to be very careful about.
So how do we prevent this?
A lot of this is building the awareness.
So we have to understand what are the situations in which this can occur and
avoid those type of situations.
Another thing to do is to avoid making personal details available.
So if you're staying in a hostel or a hotel don't put your name on the door and
don't make this kind of information of who you are, and where your working, and
what your hours are, and what your movement is.
Try to keep this as a minimal.
And these are some common survival skills that you can put together for
yourself, and one of the ways you can do this is kind of doing what if situations.
Visualize yourself in various situations where you might be attacked or
might be compromised, and what can you do and how can I get out of that?
How did I get into it in the first place?
These are all things that you need to think through, what these
potential things are, and what's the right thing to do in these situations.
So as we mentioned before, your intuition is really powerful.
Trust that intuition, prepare yourself, practice your skills and
people survive attacks if they're prepared and they act with conviction.
This reduces your chances of being injured or even killed.
When a situation occurs, you know what you're going to do because you've
rehearsed it so many times already with your brain.
So here are some of the things that can commonly be done.
Active resistance is where we usually put our energy.
Drawing attention to yourself.
Screaming, shouting, whistling, alarms, fighting back,
throwing things, all of these things are effective.
In fact, some people have just said, throwing things and
then running as fast as you can may be your defense.
There are also areas that are sensitive.
You attack these, with your knees, with your arms, with your hands whatever you
have available, and that can at least gain time for you to get away.
And then finally you don't gain anything by staying around.
There are some situations where probably passive resistance may be effective.
If you know somebody very well and you feel like you have negotiating power on
them in some way then you may succeed then but
in most situations the actual resistance probably the most effective.
So another point is to get to a safe place as soon as you can.
Now, one of the things that's often suggested, is as you drive a long or
as you're moving along for some other purpose,
just keep an eye on the margins and say, if I had to escape from here,
if I had to be off the road, if I had to be off this path, where would I go?
What would be the safe place to go?
And if something happens to you, it's important to report this.
This is sometimes difficult to do emotionally and
otherwise, but unless there's an incident report with the police or
with the authorities, it's very hard to take action against this in the future.
And then finally, the point is don't accept any personal blame.
It's not your fault, that's not the way that you were thinking, or
you were dressing, or you were doing things.
That's not your fault so
don't go down that road thinking I might have brought this on myself and so forth.
That's not good thinking in these situations.
We also have to think about how do we assist people
that are caught in these situations.
Even though it might not affect you, yourself.
But how do we assist other people?
And there's been so many horror stories about people who've needed assistance, and
the bystanders did nothing.
Now, one way is the buddy system.
So you feel like you have some responsibility for
tracking other people and their survival.
So just think about that.
Your friends go into certain places and if you're worried about this is
a dangerous place, this is something they shouldn't be doing,
talk to them about it as your responsibility.
If you see something happening, be an active bystander.
Ask if you can help, if you can call somebody, if you can escort them.
If you can alert the police.
Sometimes there may be cultural problems where you can't do this by yourself,
but you can maybe encourage other people to do this to look after people that
are clearly in distress.
And then there should be an organizational policy for
providing assistance, for providing psychological assistance,
for providing adequate reporting and documentation.
So what's the policy of your organization or the group that you're working with?
Now, from here, we want to go on to something that's probably not going to
happen to you and in fact, I hope it will never happen to you.
And that is should you be in a situation where you might be taken hostage.
And there can be some risks in certain locations for
being taken hostage and this may be taken hostage by criminal forces.
This was a major issue in Iraq where people were taken by criminal groups,
not necessarily because of religious or political affiliations.
So it might be local issues that you don't know anything about or
you're not involved about at all.
Or it may be geopolitical issues where the Americans, or Canadians, or British people
are looking bad in a certain part of the world and so this is kind of revenge
against them for things that they really had no control over in their nationality.
So a few points on hostage taking.
You can reduce the risk of being taken to hostage if you avoid regular routines.
So this time, you travel this way to the office and next time, you go another way.
And sometimes you start at 7:00 in the morning and sometimes it's 9:30, so
some kind of varied pattern here.
And if you get taken as a hostage, there are a few things first to do.
First one is be really careful in the beginning, because it's the most dangerous
time for hostage taking is right at the time you have been taken.
You should not stare at the hostage takers or
try to fix them in your brain because this might just increase your risks.
Be cooperative where you can.
Follow instructions.
Don't be too servile, or don't try to be too antagonistic.
And never plea, or cry, or beg for mercy.
That won't get you any place, it makes you just appear weak and
really not attract any attention from the hijackers at all.
And at some point, when things settle down, if you have to be detained for
a period of time just think about what are the common things that you could talk
about with your hostage takers.
Talk about their family, or the places they've visited or their education.
Or something that creates a common bond across the various groups.
And then, finally, you may be isolated for a long time.
Your job, generally,
is not to try to escape, unless it's really so obvious that you can get away.
Anything that's a bit uncertain, you should not put your life at risk.
Getting you out is the responsibility of other people, your employers or
people that have been retained to do this kind of activity.
If you're in a situation where there's a rescue attempt going on,
get down on the floor, cover your head, out of sight in some way.
Under the beds or under something,
because this is a high risk time as well for hostages.
And finally,
I wanted to talk about something on return, when you come back home again.
You've been away for some months or maybe even years and you may find
not surprisingly that there is difficulty in adjusting when you come back.
We've always heard the term culture shock,
the idea that we go to another country where the water is not clean,
and the sanitation is bad and so we have a big culture shock.
But we also have a reverse culture shock when we come back to our own country.
And we should be prepared for this, because for
many people it takes them totally as a surprise.
So the first thing you'd see as different is,
when you were in your previous location.
There was so much immediacy, there were so
many needs and there were many opportunities to work with other people,
to assist people so you felt like you could really do something that's useful.
And those are gone now.
You just feel like you're in a meaningless vacuum.
And you also look around you and you see what are the standards of society,
what are the behavioral norms, and you think this doesn't make any sense at all.
This doesn't really address these true root needs of people.
If we had this amount of resources and we had used this, in the place I just was,
we would've changed thing so much and now we're just wasting this in this frivolous
kind of life that we're existing in.
And then you have to be prepared for
the fact that your perspectives of the world are likely to have changed.
And they're altered forever, they'll never be the same as before.
And in some ways these will happen in ways that you won't anticipate.
May be completely a change from what you'd expected.
So this is a brief overview of some of the things to consider
when you're traveling overseas for safety purposes and for your own well being.
So think about these carefully and
these will help your time overseas to be an enjoyable and unforgettable experience.
And I can predict that this will have an impact on you the rest of your life.
[MUSIC]
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