Medical Tourism in Barbados: Negotiating Inherent Tensions

This chapter draws on our long term-research program examining medical tourism in Barbados and the wider Anglophone Caribbean. Since 2011 we have undertaken 69 semi-structured interviews and three focus groups with a wide range of health system and tourism sector stakeholders in Barbados, compiled a comprehensive collection of state and media reports discussing medical tourism, and collectively spent over a year conducting on-site ethnographic fieldwork that has included many informal conversations with users of the Barbadian health system from a wide range of backgrounds. Together, these datasets and experiences provide a rich understanding of the potential considerations and hopes arising from the ongoing discussion about medical tourism development in a small island setting. Exploring these considerations and hopes suggests ways in which Barbados and other small island states seeking to develop their medical tourism sectors can negotiate a structure for medical tourism that can best meet their development goals.