Symptoms while travelling
Unwell on a Trip? Find out what it needs.
Start with the symptom. For each one below, the short answer is whether a video consultation can usually help and when it needs someone in the room instead; the guide behind it gives the detail, from named public health sources. Where a destination has its own guide, it is listed underneath.
General information, not advice about your own situation. In an emergency, call the local emergency number.
- €40
- per consultation
- 13 guides
- by symptom, with destinations
Doctors licensed to treat you where you are, consulting in English.
What video can help with, symptom by symptom
Urinary infection (UTI)
Can a Video Doctor Treat a UTI?
Sometimes, and the honest answer depends less on how uncomfortable you are than on which pattern your symptoms fit. Here is where a consultation is a reasonable first step and where it is not.
Food poisoning
Do You Need a Doctor for Food Poisoning?
Often not, and saying so is more useful than selling you a consultation. Here is where a conversation genuinely helps, and where it does not.
Travellers' diarrhoea
Do You Need a Doctor for Travellers' Diarrhoea?
Usually not, and TravelHealthPro says rehydration is the main treatment. Here is where a conversation genuinely helps, and where it does not.
Colds and flu
Is It a Cold, or the Flu?
They share most of their symptoms, so the symptom list is not the useful part. NHS guidance separates them on how fast it arrived and how much it has taken out of you.
Strep throat
Can a Video Doctor Diagnose Strep Throat?
Not from a camera alone, and the page would be worth less to you if we implied otherwise. Here is what the consultation does settle, and where it stops.
Tonsillitis
What Video Can Settle, and What It Cannot
One limit is worth stating before you pay anything: a video consultation cannot tell you whether this is the viral kind or the bacterial kind. Nothing can, without a test.
Sinus infection
Do You Need a Doctor for Sinusitis?
Usually not, and NHS is unusually direct about it. The judgement is about duration and about a small set of exceptions, and that is a conversation rather than an examination.
Ear infection
What Video Can Settle, and What It Cannot
This is the one illness where we should be blunt about the limits before you pay anything. Nobody can look inside your ear down a phone camera.
Conjunctivitis
What Video Can Settle, and What It Cannot
An eye is visible, which puts this among the conditions a camera actually helps with. It is still a camera, and there are things it cannot rule out.
Rashes and bites
Pharmacy Counter, or a Doctor Who Can See It?
For a lot of holiday skin the pharmacy is genuinely the right first stop. It is worth knowing which situations it is not.
Thrush
Thrush, or a Urinary Infection?
They share one symptom and almost nothing else. NHS describes each separately, and the difference is mostly about where it hurts and what else is happening.
Migraine
What Video Can Settle, and What It Cannot
Much of assessing a migraine is the history — how an attack starts, what it does, how long it lasts and how it compares with your usual ones — which makes it well suited to a conversation.
Dizziness after flying
Can an Online Doctor Help With Dizziness?
Partly, and it is worth being precise about which part. Most of assessing dizziness is a history — when it started, what brings it on, how long each episode lasts, what else changed. That travels down a video call. The examination does not.
How the guides are written
Every guide follows the same shape, so you can find the part you need without reading the rest: what the symptom usually does and how long it tends to last; what commonly settles without a doctor; the signs that mean you should be seen, and how urgently; and whether a video consultation can help with this particular problem or whether it needs someone who can examine you.
The clinical content is drawn from named public health sources — the NHS, the CDC and the UK Foreign Office among them — and each page lists the ones it used. Where a guide covers a specific country, it adds what is different there, such as what the pharmacy can do and the local emergency number.
None of it is advice about you. A guide can tell you what a symptom usually means; a doctor who has taken your history can tell you what yours means. That is the consultation.
Good things to know.
What are these symptom guides for?
Each guide covers one thing travellers commonly get — an upset stomach, a urinary infection, a rash, a cold — and answers the same four questions about it: what it usually does, what tends to settle on its own, the signs that mean you need to be seen, and whether a video consultation is the right next step. They are written from named public health sources, listed on each page, and they are general information rather than advice about your own situation.
Can a doctor assess my symptoms by video?
Often, yes. Most of a medical assessment is a history — what is happening, when it started, what makes it worse, what else has changed — and a doctor can take that as well by video as in a waiting room. Anything visible works too. What a doctor cannot do by video is examine you, look inside an ear, take a swab or arrange a test, so if your symptoms need any of those, the useful outcome of the call is being told so early.
Which symptoms should never wait for a video call?
Chest pain, difficulty breathing, sudden weakness, numbness or confusion, heavy bleeding, a serious injury, a seizure, or someone who will not wake properly. Call the local emergency number — 112 across the EU, and the country guides give the local one where it differs. A video consultation is not the route for any of these.
My symptom is not listed here. What do I do?
The guides cover the symptoms travellers ask about most, and there are more conditions a doctor can help with than there are guides written. If yours is not here, the Pomodoc consultation still works the same way: describe what is happening and a doctor licensed to treat you where you are will tell you what to do next.
Not sure which guide you need?
Then skip the guide. Describe what is happening to a doctor by video and find out what it needs.
- €40, fixed price
- No insurance needed
- Prescriptions where available
Video consultations are for suitable non-emergency medical concerns and are not a substitute for travel insurance. In a life-threatening emergency call your local emergency number — 112 across the EU — or go to the nearest emergency department. This page is general information, not medical advice about your own situation.