A study to determine the perceptions of health tourism of health professionals

Health tourism has recently emerged as a concept emphasizing its place and importance all over the world. As a specific branch of tourism, health tourism contributes to both the country's economy and welfare. Health tourism, which has developed in Turkey in recent years, has become an increasingly important source of income and service area for both public and private hospitals. For this reason, there is now a need to determine the level of awarenes of those who produce services in the fields related to health tourism. In this respect, this quantitative research aiming to determine the awareness levels of health workers working in hospitals operating within the scope of health tourism was structured with a relational screening model. Convenience sampling technique, which is one of the non-selective sampling methods, was used in the research. The target audience of the research consists of 1963 health workers working in Elazig Fethi Sekin City Hospital and Private Medicalpark Hospitals with health tourism authorization certificate in Elazig city center. Considering the number of target populations, the sample size was determined as 400 within the range of 5% error tolerance and 95% confidence level. The data of the study were collected using the personal data form and the Health Tourism Awareness Scale. Statistical evaluation of the data was made using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 24.0) package program in computer environment. As a result of the statistical analysis; health tourism awareness of health workers was determined to be at a high level. When the awareness levels in other sub-dimensions are examined, the dimensions of "Institutional Competence" and "Health Tourism Potential of Elazig" are high, the dimension of "Effects and Problems of Health Tourism" is medium, and the dimension of "Health Tourism Practices of the Hospital" was found to be low. At the same time, after the analysis made within the framework of various variables; It was concluded that health tourism awareness levels of health workers did not differ according to the variables of gender, age, marital status, education level, professional experience and tenure in the current hospital. However awareness levels are affected by their professional duties. Finally, suggestions were made about the shortcomings. Key Words: Health Tourism, Health Professionals, Health Tourism Awareness