Raw Talk Podcast

As Canadians, we're usually quite proud of our excellent healthcare system. However, as we learned in Episodes 83 on organ donation, 82 on amputation, and others, gaps in public coverage and long wait times sometimes prevent Canadians from accessing the best care. Enter "medical tourism", or "medical travel". In this episode, we explored what it might be like for Canadians to access care abroad. We spoke with Adele Kulyk, the CEO of Global Healthcare Connections. Adele has worked for the last ten years as a coordinator to help facilitate Canadians traveling elsewhere for care. Adele explains what may drive people to leave and what sort of procedures are accessed abroad. As we explored this topic, we discovered another reason Canadians travel abroad related to healthcare: as medical students and other trainees to actually provide care, a practice colloquially known as "medical voluntourism". To understand this theme, we sat down with Dr. Noelle Sullivan, a professor in anthropology at Northwestern University,