Comments on: Drug companies are using community doctors for dinner talks

By: TrenchDoc

TrenchDoc — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:34:48 +0000

I don’t go to these dinner meetings anymore because it is not worth my time. A $50 dinner for 2 hours of my time away from my family to get the same information I could get in 10 minute google search. Not to mention being in a room full of obnoxious phrmaceutical salesmen and physicians. No thanks. I will go home and have a queit dinner with my wife and be less informed. However, I am glad the speakers are getting those kind of fees otherwise the money would just go to some politician who voted to take away our pens and pads.

By: mdcruz

mdcruz — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:25:11 +0000

These dinners definitally influence the prescribing behaviour of physicians. My partner is a major community speaker for many of the pharmaceutical companies- he is a major pusher of brand name drugs despite affordable generic alternatives. I stopped going to these programs about ten years ago subsequent to guilt. Now, I don’t even eat the lunches provided in our office. I definitally limit my time with drug reps (except the hot ones- but, I am a man as well as a physician- they do play dirty sometimes- LOL!)

By: jsmith

jsmith — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:00:36 +0000

I have no problem with docs making money. I do have a problem with docs putting their own economic interest above their patients’ interests. I’m sure these docs would argue that they’re educating, not actually treating pts when they give these talks, so they are not in fact putting their economic interests above their own pts’ interests.T here is some truth to that, but they’re influencing others, and probably not in the best way. Do these talkers have a larger obligation to society, to those pts that they don’t see but whose care is influenced by them nonetheless? People could argue either side of this, but I think they do. Perhaps it comes down to whether medicine is considered a social good or a private good. It also comes down to some extent whether the drugs they’re pushing are the best ones for the job. If not, we should take a dim view of these talkers.
I used to go to these dinner talks from time to time but always felt guilty afterwards so stopped going. My ob-gyn father-in-law can’t get enough of them and sees nothing wrong with going.