Pharmaceutical Companies Influence Medical Students

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Pharmaceutical Companies Influence Medical Students

Roman Bystrianyk, " Pharmaceutical Companies Influence Medical

Students " , Health Sentinel, September 16, 2005,

The pharmaceutical industry spends between $12 and $18 billion each

year marketing to physicians and residents. This amount of money

includes approximately 60 million annual visits by pharmaceutical

representatives as well as most of the $1.5 billion spent annually on

continuing medical education.

The September 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical

Association (JAMA) examines medical students’ exposure to

pharmaceutical company interaction. The study authors, composed of 11

medical doctors and PhDs, studied 8 medical schools to measure the

frequency of medical student exposure to drug company gifts and the

students’ attitudes about those gifts.

Pharmaceutical representatives present information favoring their

products and this increases the likelihood of prescribing that product.

These prescriptions may be “inconsistent with evidence-based

guidelines” and may be a sign of the presence of drug samples or demand

by patients due to direct advertising to consumers. Because of these

forces, prescriptions may occur even if a drug was not the doctor’s

first choice.

These pharmaceutical-doctor interactions increase the likelihood for

physicians making requests for drugs with “no clear advantage over

existing ones, prescribing nonrationally, prescribing costlier drugs,

and prescribing fewer generic drugs”, even though physicians often deny

being influenced by pharmaceutical company marketing.

The study authors found that the students received a variety of gifts.

Some of the gifts were as follows: 96% of students received free

lunches, 89% received some form of snack (e.g. donut, candy, coffee),

50% received a paid dinner, 42% received drug samples, and 2% had their

travel expenses for a conference paid for by a drug company. Also, 93%

of students had been asked or required by a physician to attend a

sponsored lunch and this “may have represented a subtle coercion.”

The authors found that most students believe they are entitled to gifts

because of financial hardships. Simultaneously, students believe that

sponsored educational events are likely to be biased and although they

feel they personally will not be influenced they believe their fellow

students are more likely to be influenced. This perception combined

with a high amount of pharmaceutical company interactions suggests “as

a group they are at risk for unrecognized influence by marketing

efforts.”

While most would assume that schools have policies regarding drug

companies interacting with students 7 of the 8 schools had none. At

the 1 school that had a policy 95% of the students were not aware their

school had a policy.

The authors conclude “research should focus on evaluating methods to

limit these experiences and affect the development of these attitudes,

with a goal of ensuring that physicians’ decisions are based solely on

helping the individual patient achieve the greatest possible benefit.”

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, September 2005