The information you want in an emergency has to be gathered before one

The worst moment is not the moment to be learning

Emergencies abroad are not usually more dangerous than emergencies at home, and they are considerably more confusing. The system is unfamiliar, the number may be different, the language is under pressure, and the ordinary knowledge that would tell a resident what to do is precisely what a newcomer lacks.

What makes this tractable is that almost all of the information involved is public, free and obtainable in an hour. The reason people do not have it is not difficulty but ordering. It sits below the flat, the bank and the paperwork on everybody’s list, and it stays there until it is needed.

Doing it in the first week costs an evening. It is the cheapest insurance available to a new arrival and it is the one most often skipped.

Which number, and what the operator needs from you

Establish the emergency number that applies where you live, and establish whether there are separate numbers for different services, since arrangements differ from country to country. Find out too whether calls are answered in any language other than the local one, because the answer varies and it is better known than assumed.

Then prepare the part you will have to supply. An operator needs a location before anything else, and a newcomer under stress cannot reliably produce their own address in the correct local format. Write it out exactly as it appears on official correspondence, including the details that seem redundant, and keep it somewhere you can read aloud from.

Learn the handful of words that describe what has happened, and accept that they will be badly pronounced. A wrong accent on the right word is enormously better than a fluent sentence in the wrong language.

Out of hours is a separate system from ordinary care

Most health systems handle nights and weekends differently from weekdays, through some combination of a duty service, a designated pharmacy, an advice line and a hospital department, and the routes into each are local. Finding out how it works while nothing is wrong is a very different exercise from finding out at two in the morning.

It is worth knowing specifically which facility you would actually go to, how you would get there, and whether it is the right one, because in many places the nearest hospital and the one that handles emergencies are not the same building. Walk or ride the route once if it is close enough to matter.

Pharmacies deserve a note of their own. In a good many countries they handle far more than dispensing, they operate a rota so that one is always open, and a pharmacist is the fastest route to sensible guidance about something minor. Learning where the rota is published is a five-minute job.

The documents somebody will ask you for

Whatever proves your identity, whatever proves your entitlement to care, and whatever policy covers you are the three things likely to be requested, and the requirements differ everywhere, so confirm what applies to your own situation from the official source and from your insurer rather than assuming your home arrangements carry over.

Keep readable copies somewhere that does not depend on your own phone being present and working, since the phone is a common casualty of exactly the situations in question. A copy with a trusted person, or in an account you can reach from any device, covers most of it.

If you have a condition, an allergy or a medication that would matter to somebody treating you while you could not explain, carry that information in written form in the local language. It is a small piece of paper and it does a job nothing else can do.

Somebody local should know roughly where you are

Living alone in a country where nobody has a routine expectation of hearing from you is a genuine and underdiscussed risk, particularly for people who arrive without colleagues. It is worth arranging that at least one person nearby would notice within a day or two if you disappeared.

A neighbour with a spare key, a colleague who knows your address, a friend you speak to on a regular day — none of it is dramatic and all of it shortens the gap between something going wrong and somebody knowing. Reciprocate, and it stops feeling like an imposition.

It is also sensible to know what your own country’s consular service does and doesn’t do for citizens abroad, because expectations here are frequently wrong in both directions. Look it up at the official source rather than relying on what people say, and note it down before the day when it might matter.