Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19916

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: Magazine

Lewindon N
Free time is worth a free lunch
Australian Doctor 2006 Aug 2523

Full text:

Editor The article ‘Code worth embracing’ by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel (Gut Feelings, 11 August) regarding the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct is offensive. It is not aimed at protecting the good reputation of Australia’s doctors; it is based on the premise that doctors are prepared to prostitute the best care for their patients to the highest pharmaceutical bidder.

Mr Samuel believes doctors should continue to place the practice of medicine above their own health and wellbeing by conducting in their own precious non-work time the burgeoning obligation of staying informed – unpaid and unrewarded.

As both organiser and delegate of many meetings, it is clear to me doctors attend only meetings that have a reputation for being informative and clinically useful. Doctors have little to gain and much to lose by not choosing the best treatments for their patients.

Sponsoring companies try to persuade us of the superiority of products, but this is the business of everyday life and doctors are well equipped to represent their patients in this regard. And where there is equivalence between products, where is the harm if one is potentially prescribed over another as a result of advertising?

The doctor, both specialist and GP, is burdened with the obligation to keep up to date on behalf of patients at a time of unprecedented change. Educational meetings with specialists and colleagues provide the forum for optimal, unbiased updating, but where is the time and who is to pay for this transfer of information? The government? The patient? The only time available is after hours and at weekends, at cost to family and relaxation time. It is our prime time that is being sacrificed for this information transfer.

Some doctors feel embarrassed to attend a meeting at a cost of $200 per head. Should I be so lucky to attended such a meeting I would not be embarrassed nor feel the need to hide this from Mr Samuel or my patients.

How much does it cost to buy the time of a top professional for three hours at penalty rates? I think $200, or more, is a bargain for the patient whose doctor is being updated with direct benefits for them.

We have nothing to hide from Mr Samuel or our patients. He should take his insinuations about our motivations and penny-pinching guidelines and impose them on the trough-rummaging snouts of our bureaucrats.

Dr Nicole Lewindon
Toowong, Qld