Faculty Connections: School of Medicine Report
Your Opinion Matters Archives
Policy for Pharmaceutical Vendors? (05.02.07)
The Dean would like your opinion on current issues. Please respond to a recent NEJM article that is summarized as follows:
The new issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports on a national survey of more than 3,000 physicians in six specialties (anesthesiology, cardiology, family practice, general surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics) related to their financial associations with industry. According to the article, “Most physicians (94%) reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, and most of these relationship involved receiving food in the workplace (83%) or receiving drug samples (78%). More than one third of the respondents (35%) received reimbursement for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education, and more than one quarter (28%) received payments for consulting, giving lectures, or enrolling patients in trials. Cardiologists were more than twice as likely as family practitioners to receive payments. Family practitioners met more frequently with industry representatives than did physicians in other specialties, and physicians in solo, two-person, or group practices met more frequently with industry representatives than did physicians practicing in hospitals and clinics.”
This was the hottest topic at last week’s AAMC Council of Deans meeting I attended in San Francisco.
Question: Do we need to have a campus-wide policy outlining how we interact with the pharmaceutical and other vendors at Loma Linda?
Please email your input to: somreport@llu.edu.
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