Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17793

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: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Med Students Need Help Dealing With Reps: Study
Pharmalot 2010 May 13
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/05/med-students-need-help-dealing-with-reps-study/

Full text:

Overwhelmed and overworked, medical students must then sort out the barrage of overtures from sales reps. But what do they make of these interactions? A paper in the Australian Medical Student Journal found that most med students have “considerable exposure” to promotion, and generally view gifts as acceptable, but only certain gifts (see page 54).
Meals and textbooks are deemed more acceptable than stethoscopes, social outings and paid travel to conferences, suggesting students do attach some negative value to gifts that are viewed as more expensive, unnecessary or influential. And while most view promotion as biased, students insist it has little effect on their prescribing, but is more likely to influence their colleagues (I’m objective, you’re not?)
“This sense of unique invulnerability has been documented previously among doctors and may suggest a naïve and inflated sense of objectivity in prescribing, as well as a curious differentiation between their abilities and those of their colleagues,” the authors write. Nonethless, students don’t support a ban on reps, but would still like more training in the official curricula for help in dealing with them.
The paper reviewed 14 studies found by searching PubMed that dealt with the issue of medical students attitudes to promotion and, the authors claim, is the first to examine student opinions and attitudes. The authors concluded that the implications are “chiefly that medical educator should be aware that medical students are exposed to pharmaceutical promotion and, currently, feel underprepared for their present and future interactions with the pharmaceutical industry.”