Medical Tourism: The view of Rafsanjan Medical University Staff

Medical Tourism has been recently paid more attention. Individual practitioners and medical organizations must be able to provide accurate information about this rapidly evolving trend. Since there has been little known about this issue, we decided to assess the knowledge about and attitude towards medical tourism in Rafsanjan, Iran. A questionnaire including XXX questions were completed by Rafsanjan Medical University staff. All information was analyzed by SPSS software. Only 8.3% of individuals sated that they studied some articles about Medical Tourism, and only 14.7% of them had deal with these kinds of patients. The majority of participants (80.7%) hadn’t had any idea about the quality of medical expenses by Medical Tourists. Mainly (68.7%) believed that development of Medical Tourism in Iran would not have any bad social consequences and 62% believed that its development in Iran could improve the knowledge of Iranian doctors. The majority (67.3%) agreed to arrange for inviting tourism to Iran in order to use of Medical Tourists and 54.3 of them believed that development of Medical Tourism could improve treatment of Iranian patients. The knowledge of participants seems is very low therefore appropriate educational programs should be tailored by responsible organizations in Iran. However medical staff’s attitude towards medical Tourism seems is very positive which indicates having necessary potential for any activity in this regard in future.