BEFORE YOUR APPOINTMENT
Here are a few tips to help you prepare for your appointment to ensure that you have a wonderful experience at the clinic:
- Eat something: It is not necessary to have an empty stomach in order to get vaccinated. It’s actually the contrary – it is best that you have a healthy meal or snack before your appointment to avoid any feelings of faintness or low blood sugar.
- Bring your immunization booklet with you: It contains your vaccination history and is pertinent for the consultation even if it is dated and the vaccines received are from many years ago.
If you do not have your immunization booklet but you know that you have received vaccinations from your family doctor or CLSC, you can call them before your appointment to find out which vaccines you have received in the past: they could still be valid.
You can also send a request to the Quebec Vaccination Registry to obtain a copy of your complete immunization history: http://publications.msss.gouv.
- Bring a list of your medications: It is essential that the nurse be informed of any and all medications that you are taking, as certain vaccines may be contraindicated if they interact with these medications. You can ask your pharmacist to print your list of medications if you are uncertain of the details.
- Your complete travel itinerary: In order to receive the best consultation possible, please bring with you your complete travel itinerary including the names of the towns that you will be staying in. Even within a given country, the risk for different diseases may vary greatly.
- We suggest that you arrive 10-15 minutes before your scheduled appointment time in order to complete the medical questionnaire required for the consultation.
- Children under 14 years of age must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian to all medical appointments. Unfortunately, children accompanied by a friend, aunt, uncle or grandparent who are not legal guardians, cannot receive vaccinations.
- If you have a fever or are taking antibiotics, reschedule your vaccine appointment. If you have any concerns, please contact the clinic before your appointment to speak with a nurse.
For pediatric appointments, it is important to prepare your child for the consultation and the possibility that they will receive an injection. Here are a few helpful tips for children’s appointments:
- It is important stay calm during your child’s vaccination process. It is completely normal that your little one may feel afraid of the injection or seem anxious (even some adults are afraid of needles!), but it is best that your child see that you are calm, reassuring and there for them.
- While they receive the injection, you can help distract your child by signing a song, holding them in your arms or telling them a story: keeping their mind off of what is happening however possible!
- It can be helpful to give the child some choices in order to have them feel more in control of the situation: do they prefer to sit on your lap or by themselves in the chair? However, the choice over whether to receive the vaccine or not should be the child’s decision, only the parent’s.
