You, too, can be an international medical traveler: reading medical travel guidebooks.
Drawing on literature on self-help and travel guide writing, this paper interrogates five international medical travel guidebooks aimed at encouraging American and British audiences to travel abroad to purchase medical care. These guidebooks articulate a three-step self-help "program" to produce a "savvy" international medical traveler. First, readers are encouraged to view their home healthcare system as dysfunctional. Second, they are encouraged to re-read destinations' healthcare landscapes as hosting excellent and accessible care. Finally, these texts explicitly enjoin readers to see themselves as active, cosmopolitan consumers whose pursuits are central to rectifying the dysfunction of their home healthcare systems.
Cultural Geography Chair Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. meghann.ormond@wur.nl
Meghann
M
Ormond
Matthew
M
Sothern
D006801:Humans; D057193:Medical Tourism; D012013:Reference Books; D012648:Self Care