Educating Health Professionals about Drug and Device Promotion: Advocates' Recommendations
PLoS Medicine - Educating Health Professionals about Drug and Device Promotion: Advocates' Recommendations: "This Health in Action provides recommendations for improving education for health professionals about pharmaceutical and device promotion, which includes any activity that can increase sales of pharmaceuticals or devices. The recommendations were produced by an iterative E-mail discussion among representatives of four organizations: the American Medical Student Association, Healthy Skepticism Inc., No Free Lunch, and PharmAware (Box 1).
We hope these recommendations will inform, stimulate, and support educators of health professionals to develop improved education about pharmaceutical and device promotion. We will survey educators to seek their views on these recommendations.
Background
In the promotion of rofecoxib (Vioxx), “drug marketing got well ahead of the science” [1]. The successful hormone-replacement-therapy marketing campaign “convinced physicians that so called HRT [hormone-replacement therapy] prevented cardiovascular disease before one single clinical trial with cardiovascular disease end points had ever been done” [2]. These are just two examples of how misleading promotion can be a major threat to health [1,2].
There were an estimated 88,000–140,000 excess cases of serious coronary artery disease attributable to rofecoxib in the United States alone [3]. The number of women harmed by severe adverse effects of hormone-replacement therapy, including breast cancer, may have been even larger because hormone-replacement therapy was used for longer, but we are not aware of any reliable estimate. Reforms are needed to reduce the risk of similar events occurring again [4].
The US Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education states that “residents must learn how promotional activities can influence judgment in prescribing decisions and research activities through specific instructional activities” [5]. World Health Assembly resolution 52.19 urges member states to “integrate the rational use of drugs and information on commercial marketing strategies into training for health practitioners at all levels.” However, a recent worldwide survey of education about pharmaceutical promotion in medical and pharmacy schools found that “in most cases … students devoted one half day or less to this topic during their professional training; in nearly one third of cases, medical faculties devoted only 1–2 hours” [6]. That survey also found wide variations in objectives, ranging from aiming to “increase students' ability to extract beneficial information from drug promotion” to aiming to “increase students' use of independent information sources."
We hope these recommendations will inform, stimulate, and support educators of health professionals to develop improved education about pharmaceutical and device promotion. We will survey educators to seek their views on these recommendations.
Background
In the promotion of rofecoxib (Vioxx), “drug marketing got well ahead of the science” [1]. The successful hormone-replacement-therapy marketing campaign “convinced physicians that so called HRT [hormone-replacement therapy] prevented cardiovascular disease before one single clinical trial with cardiovascular disease end points had ever been done” [2]. These are just two examples of how misleading promotion can be a major threat to health [1,2].
There were an estimated 88,000–140,000 excess cases of serious coronary artery disease attributable to rofecoxib in the United States alone [3]. The number of women harmed by severe adverse effects of hormone-replacement therapy, including breast cancer, may have been even larger because hormone-replacement therapy was used for longer, but we are not aware of any reliable estimate. Reforms are needed to reduce the risk of similar events occurring again [4].
The US Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education states that “residents must learn how promotional activities can influence judgment in prescribing decisions and research activities through specific instructional activities” [5]. World Health Assembly resolution 52.19 urges member states to “integrate the rational use of drugs and information on commercial marketing strategies into training for health practitioners at all levels.” However, a recent worldwide survey of education about pharmaceutical promotion in medical and pharmacy schools found that “in most cases … students devoted one half day or less to this topic during their professional training; in nearly one third of cases, medical faculties devoted only 1–2 hours” [6]. That survey also found wide variations in objectives, ranging from aiming to “increase students' ability to extract beneficial information from drug promotion” to aiming to “increase students' use of independent information sources."
posted by Aloyzio Achutti | 2:51 AM
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