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The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu faces a number of challenges in delivering surgical care to its population. We aimed to understand and document the barriers, opportunities and required actions to improve surgical care in the country using a mixed methods analysis which incorporated the perspectives of local health stakeholders.

A baseline quantitative assessment of surgical capacity in Vanuatu was carried out using the WHO situational analysis tool. Twenty semi‐structured interviews were then conducted on the two main islands (Efate and Espiritu Santo) with surgeons, allied health staff, health managers, policy‐makers and other key stakeholders, using a grounded theory qualitative case study methodology. Initial informants were identified by purposive sampling followed by snowball sampling until theoretical saturation was reached. Interviews were open and axially coded …