“I didn’t even know what I was looking for”: A qualitative study of the decision-making processes of Canadian medical tourists

Semi-structured phone interviews were administered to 32 Canadians who had gone abroad as medical tourists. Interviews touched on motivations, assessment of risks, information seeking processes, and experiences at home and abroad. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts followed.Three overarching themes emerged from the interviews: (1) information sources consulted; (2) motivations, considerations, and timing; and (3) personal and professional supports drawn upon. Patient testimonials and word of mouth connections amongst former medical tourists were accessed and relied upon more readily than the advice of family physicians. Neutral, third-party information sources were limited, which resulted in participants also relying on medical tourism facilitators and industry websites.While Canadian medical tourists are often thought to be motivated by wait times for surgery, cost and availability of procedures were common primary and secondary motivations for participants, demonstrating that motivations are layered and dynamic. The findings of this analysis offer a number of important factors that should be considered in the development of informational interventions targeting medical tourists. It is likely that trends observed amongst Canadian medical tourists apply to those from other nations due to the key role the transnational medium of the Internet plays in facilitating patients’ private international medical travel.The term ‘medical tourism’ describes the intentional movement of patients across international borders to seek medical care that has been privately purchased and arranged for [1,2]. The elements of intentionality and private arrangement are key to defining which care-seeking behaviours constitute medical tourism as opposed to other forms of international medical travel such as formal cross-border care arrangements and emergency care for vacationing tourists, although the term has been used at times to describe all of these forms of care. The global