Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17275

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: news

Gale J
Drugmaker-Funded Food Accepted by Half of U.S. Doctor Programs
Business Week 2010 Feb 23
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-23/drugmaker-funded-food-accepted-by-half-of-u-s-doctor-programs.html

Full text:

Food and teaching materials from drugmakers were accepted by about half of U.S. physician- training programs, even though most of the programs’ directors said industry aid wasn’t desirable, a survey found.
Of 236 program directors who responded in a survey in 2006 and 2007, 56 percent reported accepting support from pharmaceutical companies, according to a study published online yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Seventy-two percent expressed that such support is undesirable.
The findings highlight industry interactions with residency programs that may lead to changes in prescribing practices not necessarily based on scientific evidence, the authors said. Offers of free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services by drug and medical device companies should be spurned by doctors, staff and students to avoid conflicts of interest, the Association of American Medical Colleges said in a 2008 report.
“Residents often do not believe that their own actions are influenced by industry contact or gifts, but they believe that their colleagues’ prescribing practices could be altered,” Laura L. Loertscher, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues wrote.
In 1990, 89 percent of internal medicine program directors surveyed reported industry support of some kind, the researchers said. The acceptance of such aid may be waning because of new guidelines and publicity on the topic, they said.
Programs may find industry support a readily available funding source for specific activities, the authors wrote. The most commonly cited use of industry funding was for provision of food at conferences or educational activities, a strategy that has been shown to boost conference attendance, they said.
“Despite the attention around conflict of interest with pharmaceutical support, we were surprised to find that only 29.2 percent of the responding program directors reported a specific curriculum to instruct residents about interactions with the pharmaceutical industry,” the researchers said.