Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20046

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

Gahan L
Controls on GP recreation are too prohibitive
Medical Observer 2005 July 2325

Full text:

Editor: I recently received a survey form (unfunded) from a pharmaceutical company, asking why attendances at medical meetings has dropped off and what could be done about it.

The simple answer relates to the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct.

I refuse to go to meetings where the venue and dining offered is below the standards of restaurants I would normally dine at. Despite being very selective, I am increasingly caught out with substandard experiences. A recent example was a dinner meeting in Brisbane where an international speaker was presenting.

Delegates were provided with nibbles at the table, I assume for entree, and then suffered the indignity akin to attending a soup kitchen for the main course when they stood in a line of up to 60 to be served a small cardboard box with a few spoonfuls of Chinese takeaway.

Of course, a number of us left and dined elsewhere.

To treat the delegates this was is sad, but the sight of the international speaker standing with his cardboard box was a total embarrassment.

Does Medicines Australia not realise the consultation or two that we are missing by talking to reps, for example, means we are losing $35-70 minimum?

Another fascinating edict of the code is that GPs are the only group in Australia who aren’t allowed to have any recreational activity remotely associated with education.

When are GPs going to unite and say enough is enough? We are the only group expected to work ridiculous hours, subsidise governments, do our education after exhausting days, and never adorn any corporate box.

Have a look at the occupants of those boxes next time you’re at any sporting events, at the corporate golf day, and at the educational evening that finishes with an inspiring or entertaining speaker.

Dr Larry Gahan
Zillmere, Qld