Loadin’ up on the freebies October 24, 2007
Posted by keepbreathing in asinine, ethics, hospital, medical ethics.trackback
As part of the ongoing Respiratory Care Week festivities at Sunny Flats Medical Center, the RT department has been having free lunches sponsored by various people who give us CEU-worthy lunchtime speeches. Even though today was my day off, I went in to hear the speech and get my CEU–and some freebies.
You see, the lunch today was sponsored by A Major Pharmaceutical Company. Major Pharmaceutical Company manufactures a specialty respiratory drug that is used with varying degrees of frequency here, and in an effort to boost the usage of their product they treated us RTs to a phenomenal lunch of delicious Italian foods, gourmet brownies and gallons of Sweet Tea. To further curry favor with us respiratory types, the rep from MPC brought us toys.
I snagged myself a sweet stethoscope cover, a notebook, half a dozen pens for MPC’s various products, a magnet and a little hand-sanitizer bottle holder thing. The talk was by one of our intensivists, who was speaking about the need for better communication in the ICU to improve outcomes. He made some excellent points as far as I could tell, although I was somewhat distracted by my bag of goodies and my delicious foods.
I know there are ethical concerns about drug-company sponsored events, but frankly I like the freebies too much to be strongly opposed to drug rep lunches. Besides, it’s a free market: why shouldn’t companies be able to aggressively advertise?
More wacky medical tales to come soon.
Sweet Tea?
Egads. That stuff is toxic. You can have the gallons of Sweet Tea. But the food sounds good.
And, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch!”
LOL
happy RT week
As an NHS Procurement professional, this kind of attitude can cause major problems. If a formal tender process is taking place, these cosy little events can actually lead to legal challenges that incur tens of thousands of pounds in costs and cause NHS staff to have to repeat major pieces of work unneccesarily. That’s before even mentioning the conflicts of interest that can cause clinicians to stick with companies’ products even when there are more cost effective clinical equivalents available. These cosy relationships are precisely what the companies’ are after, as they are fully aware that once established, they can milk the public sector for every drop they can.
I agree that it can cause problems, but…free stuff! And I think there’s a difference between having a free lunch and some goodies and a conflict of interest. COI would be when a practicing physician is advertising a drug, and that definitely causes problems, but I like to think that most people are smart enough not to be swayed by the freebies. I don’t think my experience at lunchtime will really cause me to change my attitude towards the drug that was advertised throughout it.