The legal liabilities of physicians in health tourism according to the Turkish law and private international law

Health tourism can be defined as traveling to another country with the purpose of receiving medical services. The field of medical tourism, in which home country physicians perform, constitutes a significant part of health tourism. The medical profession, by its very nature, is a risky one, and, on occasion, patients suffer due to medical application errors. Physicians have criminal, administrative, legal, and deontological liabilities due to these medical application errors. Also, the element of foreignness becomes involved in health tourism. Thus, usually, a conflict of laws arises, and according to which state's law the incident will be solved becomes a problem. The primary goals of this study include investigating health tourism in Turkey, examining the legal liabilities of physicians according to the Turkish Law and the law to be applied to the cases in which medical application errors occurred. Since Turkish Law can also be applied in health tourism disputes in some cases, Turkish Law has also been scrutinized within this study's scope.