This study explored the written online narratives about medical tourism in Malaysia and Thailand using qualitative content analysis. The Google search engine was used for narrative search. Multiple search terms including medical, health, wellness tourism; treatment abroad; medical or health travel; treatment, surgery, or plastic surgery; dental treatment or braces were used to obtain related blog posts, discussions, and forums via a purposeful sampling method. A total of 43 online narratives were included in this study. Themes were then created after an iterative analysis of the selected online comments or posts. The push factors that act as motivators were: cost (100%), attractions (81%), availability of facilitators (62%), physician’s background and expertise (58%), bandwagon effect (42%). The majority of the subjects (88%) stated that they were satisfied with the outcomes of their medical treatments received in Malaysia and Thailand.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	health services management, health tourism, plastic surgery, patient preference, cost reduction, qualitative content analysis
Research Division:	Biomedical and Clinical Sciences
Research Group:	Pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences
Research Field:	Clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Evaluation of health and support services
Objective Field:	Health education and promotion
UTAS Author:	Ming, LC (Dr Long Ming)
ID Code:	114083
Year Published:	2017 (online first 2016)
Web of Science® Times Cited:	10
Deposited By:	Pharmacy
Deposited On:	2017-02-04
Last Modified:	2017-12-12
Downloads:	0