Café Rio at Your Clinic
Current Events
Free stuff?!? Many BYU students jump at the opportunity to get free stuff, whether its hot dogs at the 4th of July parade, free pizza from BYUSA, t-shirts thrown by Cosmo into a crowd at a football or basketball game, or even scholarship money. Even if it’s not free, many single college students around Provo eat Ramen every day at ten cents a meal. Similarly, pre-med students look for ways to save and make money to help pay for their high-priced education. However, when does this behavior of trying to make something out of nothing slow down? Hopefully, it slows down when patients become involved.
Last year, I shadowed a doctor here in Provo. He is well-known among local physicians and respected for his advice concerning new surgical procedures and practices. On the first day I shadowed him, a drug company provided this doctor and his staff with lunch from Café Rio. Almost every day I watched him in the surgery room, sales reps donned in scrubs to tell why their product did the best job for the situation. After the doctor would visit a patient in an exam room, a sales rep from a drug or surgical tool company would be in the hall to say hi and drop off the occasional gift. While I shadowed this doctor for a couple dozen hours over three months, he received a leather laptop case, a holster for his iPhone, a shiny digital recorder for his dictations, a briefcase that could be rolled on wheels, and carry-on luggage for a future trip to Britain.
What would you do in this situation? What if you were handed all of this free stuff? The easy thing to do, to the pleasure of the sales reps and drug companies, will be to reciprocate the kindness by writing more prescriptions for the sales reps’ products. Instead of prescribing a pill you know works, will you give a patient a different product because a sales rep was kind and gave you a leather laptop case?
As a future physician, decide early what you would do in situations like this, regardless of the field you go into. Prevent your affinity for free stuff from impacting your patients.
- What impact will you allow drug companies and sales reps to have on your practice and decisions?
- Will you accept gifts from sales reps and companies?
- How will you find accurate information about prescriptions and products?
Article by Philip Ross
23 March 2010 - 6:05pm
#2
Wonderful
I loved this article. It is very thought provoking and pertinent; as future physicians we need to ensure that we do what we can to put out the pharmaceutical fire that currently rages in the medical world.
My dad is a radiation oncologist, and while I was growing up, I was accustomed to seeing the names of perscription drugs on everything we owned - sholder bags, pens, mint boxes, t-shirts, etc. My dad always made a game out of it..."how much stuff can I score from the drug reps?" and then would give most of his plunder to his 7 kids.
However, my dad never accepted expensive gifts. Trivial, useful items, yes; leather laptop case, no. As future physicians, we need to remember that most of the sales reps are not interested in what's best for our patients, and will aggressively try to sell us on their drugs; some will even stoop to outright lies, bribery, and deciept. This is part of the reason why we need to study so hard now - so that we can understand the empirical data behind the drugs that these companies are selling and make scientifically sound decisions about what is best for our patients. We are the gate between the drug companies and our patients, and if we treat that stewardship lightly or exchange it for free goodies, we are not being people of integrity.
SD