Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4731

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: media release

Abbott S.
Letter to Healthy Skepticism: Personal concerns regarding drug company sponsored conferences and an alternative approach
Medicine with Altitude 2006 May 15
www.medicinewithaltitude.com

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

At last, a doctors’ conference organizer with ethical principles!

‘Medicine with Altitude’ (and similar organisations if they exist) deserves our full support.

Full text:

Dear Healthy Skepticism

I live with a rural proceduralist GP, and we have been here for the past 23 years, raising our young family of four children. From 1997 – 2004 I worked for the NSW Rural Doctors Network as their
program director for the Rural Medical Family Network (RMFN) and was involved in organising their 3 annual conferences. I left NSW RDN to embark upon a law degree, which I commenced at the start of 2005, and to start my own meeting business.

Last year I was approached by a group of GPs to organise their monthly CME meetings. I ran 6 meetings with drug company sponsorship, and over that time became gradually appalled at the relationship that existed between medical practitioners and the pharmaceutical industry. I raised this situation with the GPs at the start of 2006 and proposed that I would be happy to continue organising their meetings if we declined to use drug company sponsorship, but instead set a reasonable fee for each GP to pay for refreshments and the bottle of wine to be given to the visiting specialist. (I should mention that I am accredited with both ACRRM and the RACGP and that all the meetings I organise attract PDP points and QA & CPD points respectively). Whilst some doctors prepared to discuss this new development in their education, I met with considerable resistance from further down the valley to the point where they have gone back to the drug companies to organise their CME.

The following issues have also concerned me:

Stationery and pens – a friend of ours recently had to sign the medicare bumpf with a viagara pen at a surgery reception

The Tailored Drug-lunch – something for all tastes and time available whether it be junk food / quality fruit / quality cheese / ‘eat-on-the-run’ food for the busy on-call doctor / individualised expresso coffee (a practice in the valley has a drug rep call in every Monday at 10am with muffins and expresso coffee exactly to each doctor’s liking!?) / freshly squeezed orange juice / etc etc. ‘Human nature’ feels a natural obligation to listen and be polite once you’ve eaten someone else’s food – shouldn’t there be an embargo on such blatant smoozing?
The RACGP and ACRRM accrediting drug company CME – how is that possible? I am flabberghasted that the colleges give credence to such educational sessions – how can a drug company deliver unbiased educational content and why are the GP colleges so naive as to believe that they can?

Genesis Ed – one Pfizer rep informed me that Pfizer had their own team of doctors, Genesis Ed, who organised their CME and not only did these guys have currency with the Aus Doc but that they ran on-line CME. Basically she was warning me off her patch but I was dismayed that Pfizer has the capability of organising CME technically under a pseudonym for doctors uneasy with drug company CME.
Peer Reviews at restaurants and other inappropriate venues – privacy / non-medical personnel in attendance ie wait staff and drug reps / security / legal issues. For some of the sensitive material discussed at Peer Reviews, I truly feel these sort of events should either be run in hospitals or surgeries, with no non-medical persons present.

Currently I am in the throes of organising a drug-free conference in New Zealand this coming July, predominantly for rural proceduralist GPs. I appreciate it is a bit of a gamble without drug money but hey! it’s worth a try and utterly liberating. It will be truly delightful not having any drug reps hovering with their ever present insincerity and excessive friendliness.

Kind regards

Sue Abbott
contact: info@medicinewithaltitude.com www.medicinewithaltitude.com