Physicians Prescribe Tougher Conflict Rules
The Age
Tuesday May 9, 2006
DOCTORS should not accept gifts from drug companies - even pens and notepads - according to beefed-up ethical guidelines released yesterday.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which represents 9000 medical specialists in Australian and New Zealand, has moved to clarify the relationship between doctors and drug companies. The new guidelines are of an "advisory nature only", but go further than the previous two editions. They call on hospitals, research institutes and universities to establish committees to deal with doctors' conflicts of interest with companies. Doctors falsely believed they were not influenced by drug companies, Monash University's Paul Komesaroff, the college's ethics convener and an author of the guidelines, said. But he said the evidence was overwhelming: there was no such thing as a free pen. Even trivial forms of promotion, such as notepads, were effective in influencing and distorting what drugs a doctor prescribed. The guidelines include:? Entertainment offers should be rejected.? Accepting drug samples should be avoided in most cases.? Offers to fund travel to conferences should be "considered carefully" and restricted only to those who will make a formal contribution."I think this is really a matter of changing the culture of medicine," Associate Professor Komesaroff said.
© 2006 The Age
