What is better than free stuff? Nothing, right? Well on my
daily Instagram scroll through, I noticed that one person posted about a verifying
healthcare movement, in particular, the medical industry’s practice of giving
gifts to doctors. George Kanabe, a second- year student at Fordham Law School
wrote an article about how many medical industry companies give gifts to
doctors and the implications it has on the care that the doctor will provide to
the patient. I thought it was interesting how gift- giving influences the
doctor to choose the promoted products even when those products held no
demonstrated advantage over existing ones. It’s important to consider the real
purpose of a company to provide such gifts and the values that the doctor
themselves hold to accept or deny. I think many would say that they wouldn’t
accept gifts. It was interesting to see that in one of the studies in the
article they found that while 85% of medical students believe it is improper
for politicians to accept gifts, only about 46% feel that it is improper for
doctors to accept gifts of similar value from industry. Why do you think that
medical students have such a different opinion when a politician accepts gifts
as opposed to when a healthcare person does?
Article about this:
Link to the study statistic:
I think it is very interesting that medical students have differing opinions regarding politicians and healthcare providers accepting gifts. I think that people feel that if a politician accepts a gift from somebody that is lobbying, then it will sway the politician’s vote. I mean that seems to be the goal of lobbyists. However, I found a study that suggests that medical students may also be swayed by gifts from pharmaceutical companies. The study suggested that medical students have differing views of Lipitor and Zocor, when they are exposed to promotional items from the pharmaceutical companies. Many medical students said that they would prescribe Lipitor over Zocor when they were exposed to the promotional items. So, the prescribing behavior of medical school students can be changed by accepting gifts or small promotional items. This can be great for the pharmaceutical companies but can ultimately harm patients and insurance companies. Brand name drugs are more expensive so, the patient and insurance companies may have to pay more the same drug. So, I am not sure whether or not there is a difference is accepting gifts whether its healthcare providers or politicians. I think that gifts can be/are used as a tactic in order to change the opinion of an individual, which could be harmful.
ReplyDeleteThe study can be found on this website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19433701/