corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 407

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Gibbons RV, Landry FJ, Blouch DL, Jones DL, Williams FK, Lucey CR, Kroenke K.
A comparison of physicians' and patients' attitudes toward pharmaceutical industry gifts.
J Gen Intern Med 1998 Mar; 13:(3):151-4
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1525-1497.1998.00048.x


Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To compare physicians’ and their patients’ attitudes toward pharmaceutical gifts.

DESIGN: Survey of physicians and their patients.

SETTING: Two tertiary-care medical centers, one military and one civilian.

PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred sixty-eight of 392 consecutively surveyed physicians, 100 of 103 randomly selected patients at the military center, and 96 patients in a convenience sample at the civilian center completed the survey.

MEASUREMENTS: Participants rated 10 pharmaceutical gifts on whether they were appropriate for physicians to accept and whether they were likely to influence prescribing. Patients found gifts less appropriate and more influential than did their physicians. About half of the patients were aware of such gifts; of those unaware, 24% responded that this knowledge altered their perception of the medical profession. Asked whether they thought their own physician accepted gifts, 27% said yes, 20% no, and 53% were unsure. For patients, feeling that gifts were inappropriate was best predicted by a belief that gifts might influence prescribing, while for physicians, the best predictor was knowledge of guidelines.

CONCLUSIONS: Patients feel pharmaceutical gifts are more influential and less appropriate than do their physicians. Physicians may want to consider this in deciding whether to accept particular gifts. Broader dissemination of guidelines may be one means of changing physician behavior. At the same time, future guidelines should further consider the potentially different viewpoints of patients and physicians.

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








You are going to have many difficulties. The smokers will not like your message. The tobacco interests will be vigorously opposed. The media and the government will be loath to support these findings. But you have one factor in your favour. What you have going for you is that you are right.
- Evarts Graham
See:
When truth is unwelcome: the first reports on smoking and lung cancer.