Usually, we expect that the presentation will be highly biased and will promote whatever drug as the new best thing since penicillin. So we go in with our secret decoder rings on to filter out all the BS.
And, yes, I'm aware of all the ethical issues surrounding pharm dinners and perks, and frankly I think its BS. As a physician in training I think I'm savvy enough to know that walking into a drug company meeting I'm not going to find a comprehensive, unbiased description of XYZ drug or condition. And I mean really, the pen thing??? Get real. (although I totally understand doing away with gifts and incentives like trips to Europe for writing 400 scripts in a month, etc.)
But last night we discovered that Eli Lilly is up to a new trick. They didn't try to push a drug on us. In fact, they didn't even MENTION a drug. I don't even know WHAT drug they were promoting. Basically a physician speaker came in a presented current research (not from Eli Lilly either) on metabolic disease prevalence among those with mental illness. We actually learned something. Didn't feel pressures. Didn't need our decoder rings. Had a great dinner. For free.
Eli Lilly, if this is an attempt at reverse psychology... nice work.
Everyone thinks they're immune to marketing. If you were the companies wouldn't do it. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI think my point was that one of the greatest tools a physician has is objectivity... and I don't think that goes out the window because of a presentation and a pen. I certainly agree that pharmaceutical companies indeed have an "agenda"... which I can recognize or assume just the same as I can see an agenda when a hospital changes their billing structure, or when a Program Director stops admitting foreign graduates to a prestigious program. Agendas surround us in medicine...everywhere... it's our job to sort through it and come up with our best version of the truth.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds plausible:
ReplyDeletePharmaceutical companies are being silently pursued for violations of kickback and anti-fraud schemes. I know, I had to help a client audit their first years' travel records, samples records, and more then submit all of that to a public accounting firm of choice for eventual submission to the OIG (Office of Inspector General).
My client was busted for far less than Eli Lilly... so it reasons that maybe, they don't want to push anything anymore or get fined heavily again. Plus, the audit?
It is an awful process... stupid, but tedious. Really worse than just financial or operational audits.
And I could be wrong as to why they didn't push a specific drug.
Be careful Ella, there is always an agenda and we are never as objective as we think we are.
ReplyDeleteEven if you would recoil at the idea of taking a kickback for your prescriptions, your unconscious responds strongly to little gifts. You were going to write a statin any way, so why not write one made by the company that was so nice to you. It's human nature, and the drug companies know this. The best part is that it's unconscious so everyone who does it says they don't.
You should check out nofreelunch.org it's a group for medical professionals that vow to take nothing from pharm companies.
Okay, Doctor D will now step off the soapbox and cease his revolutionary agitating. Sorry about that.