Medical students in the United States are frequently exposed to pharmaceutical marketing, even during their very early years at university. And the extent of their contacts with the industry is associated with a generally positive attitude towards marketing, and skepticism towards the negative implications that this activity may hide.
These are the results of a research led by Kirsten Austad and Aaron Kesselheim of the Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA), published this week in 'PLoS Medicine', which invites strategies to be undertaken to educate students on interactions with the pharmaceutical industry.
The authors reviewed all published research on this topic for a total of 9,850 medical students in 76 schools. It found that most students had some form of interaction with the pharmaceutical industry and that contact increases over the years, with 90% bits of 'future doctors' receiving some form of educational material from drug companies.
Most students think it is ethical to accept gifts from companies and justify the right to receive gifts by citing their financial difficulties, or by saying that the majority of students behave this way. Nearly two-thirds of aspiring 'white coats' say they are immune to the biases that can arise from promotions, gifts or interactions with sales representatives.
Dissenting opinions, on the other hand, on the hypothesis of introducing rules that regulate medical-industry interactions by the Faculties or by the government.
Barbara Di Chiara – May 25, 2011 – Pharmakronos
