Bogota Surgery

About Bogota Surgery

Bogota Surgery was created by K. Eckland, ACNP-BC, MSN, RN a acute care nurse practitioner in cardiothoracic surgery, and medical writer.

This project began as an expansion from her original project, Cartagena Surgery in February of 2010.  After working with patients from all backgrounds and watching the American health care system continue to deteriorate and fail many of the neediest patients – Kristin became interested in surgical tourism.

During an interview with a Virginia newspaper, Kristin explained how she became interested in medical tourism, and her purpose in exploring this industry.  "Several of my patients asked me about medical tourism, and were relying heavily on industry supported websites to find surgeons and medical providers. This made me exceedingly nervous about their health and well-being since none of these websites were independently reviewed, operated or unbiased, and there is very little regulation of medical tourism companies. It sounded like a recipe for disaster to me - but I also understood why my patients were interested".   

"As a healthcare provider, my job is to give unbiased and honest information to my patients - even if it means they might chose to go to other providers and make decisions that other doctors and nurses may not like.

I just needed a way to find out who the excellent providers were, (and who wasn't so great) so that my patients would have the necessary information to make informed decisions".

 As Kristin researched medical tourism, she discovered that this industry was very poorly regulated with few consumer safeguards or protection.  Many of the companies offering medical tourism services were basic travel agencies, and these agents had never even met the doctors or providers they were promoting. 

Despite these pitfalls, Kristin thought that the ideas behind medical tourism - competitively priced medicine were sound - if poorly organized.

 
"So, I began traveling, interviewing and observing surgeries as a way to try and make sure that my patients would have legitimate and unbiased information about surgical tourism options. I use internationally accepted criteria and scientific tools to evaluate providers, procedures and facilities. I invested my own money (my retirement) into this project, and accept no outside funding from doctors, hospitals, companies so that readers could be assured of my impartiality. I don’t work for the doctors, I work for my readers.

"I feel strongly that as a nurse, my job is to advocate for my patients – and while I wish everyone could stay close to home for their medical needs, that’s just not the reality for many people. Instead – I want to help people find safe options.

"I limit myself to surgical tourism and surgeons for a couple of reasons – the main reason being that I have extensive surgical experience and know the international standards and protocols used for surgery and surgical patients. I also believe that its not always practical to encourage people to seek medical tourism for chronic diseases/ conditions that require frequent follow-ups."

 

For more information, please see our sister site, www.bogotasurgery.org

Copyright 2011 Bogota Surgery. All rights reserved.

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