Abstract
Objective: To determine the awareness and attitudes of the Pakistani population regarding physician–pharmaceutical company interactions. Methods: The data were collected from primary health care clinics and pharmacy outlets located within cities of six randomly selected districts of the Punjab Province. Those individuals (age ≥18 years) who have just completed their visit to the physician and well understand Urdu language were approached. Descriptive analysis was performed for all variables by using SPSS (IBM version 26). Results: A total of 3,852 participants fully completed the study out of 4,301 (response rate 89.5%). Of those, 30.9% were female; two-thirds (66.7%) were aware of drug representatives’ visits to clinics. The majority were aware of pharmaceutical company material presence (or absence) in the physicians’ rooms (56.6%), company items with logos (66.8%), patient education materials (73.4%), and 60.8% thought that receiving gifts from companies was “wrong/unethical” practice for physicians, which was lower in comparison to other professions such as judges to accept gifts from lawyers (65.6%) and professional sports umpires to acknowledge gifts (64.3%). A minority said that they have lower trust on physicians for using drug company notepads or pens (16.7%), going on trips sponsored by the company (16.7%), accepting gifts <15,000 PKR (90.3 US$) (26.7%), and accepting gifts >15,000 PKR (90.3 US$) (40.0%). Conclusion: Survey participants were well aware of physician–pharmaceutical company interactions. Participants were more knowledgeable regarding the pharmaceutical company presence (or absence) in physicians’ offices than about gift-related practices of physicians. Trust on the physician was not affected by small gifts but by the large gifts.
Highlights
The pharmaceutical industry (PI) uses numerous tactics for promoting its products to physicians such as offering gifts, free meals, and advertisements (King et al, 2013)
The study found that according to perceptions of medical sale representatives 33% of physicians were indulged in unethical prescribing and 42% never made an inquiry or sought evidence for promoting medicines, whereas 70% of the physicians claimed that medical sales representatives ignored patient’s well-being to achieve their sales objectives (Naqvi et al, 2019)
This study explored the awareness and attitudes of the Pakistani general population regarding physician–pharmaceutical company interactions
Summary
The pharmaceutical industry (PI) uses numerous tactics for promoting its products to physicians such as offering gifts, free meals, and advertisements (King et al, 2013). Pharmaceutical manufacturers claim that drug promotional activities are intended for the education of the physician, the accelerated promotion of medicinal products is possibly linked to the prescription behavior (Epstein et al, 2013; King et al, 2013). In 2019, a study was conducted to document the interaction between physicians and medical sales representatives in Pakistan. The study found that according to perceptions of medical sale representatives 33% of physicians were indulged in unethical prescribing and 42% never made an inquiry or sought evidence for promoting medicines, whereas 70% of the physicians claimed that medical sales representatives ignored patient’s well-being to achieve their sales objectives (Naqvi et al, 2019)
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