Active Learning to Promote Early and Effective Physician Interaction with Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing Practices
Authors: Baskir Elan , Athauda Gagani , Zeiarati Golsheed N , Kashan Sanaz B , Camps‐Romero Eduardo , Gillis Marin 
Published: June 2021

Introduction

The challenge: There is not enough time in an overcrowded medical curriculum to prepare medical students to meet their professional ethical obligations before they first interact with the pharmaceutical representatives.

The solution: A team of educators including a medical ethicist, pharmacist, MDs and MD student successfully pilot a required, engaging ethics intervention integrated into the first‐year pharmacology course.

Background

Interactions with pharmaceutical companies influence physicians' prescribing behaviour.

Medical students have extensive exposure to pharmaceutical industry marketing during early years of training. We integrated an ethics intervention in the first‐year medical students' required pharmacology course to address this.

Methods

120 students were divided into four equal‐sized groups for a one‐hour session. A short lecture described techniques used by reps to influence prescribing practices, including those developed for 8 physician types. Students watched two 5‐minute live dramatizations of a physician‐pharmaceutical representative interaction based on scripts developed by the team. Students identified examples of the techniques they could see being used on the physician‐actor according to one of the 8 types. Students debriefed with faculty, completed pre‐ and post‐session surveys, and a post‐course evaluation. 9 students did not complete either the pre‐ or post‐session surveys.

Results

45% of students had no prior experience with pharmaceutical representatives. 44% of students agreed or strongly agreed that pharmaceutical representatives provide educational value to medical students/physicians, both before and after the session. However, the number of students who agreed or strongly agreed that pharmaceutical representatives provide biased information increased from 82% to 98% after the session. The number of students who said pharmaceutical marketing and promotional activities have moderate or strong influence on physician prescribing decisions increased from to 63% to 80%. When asked to list all which would be acceptable for medical students to accept from a pharmaceutical representative, 25% of students said nothing would be acceptable before the session, compared to 61% afterwards. 90% of students believed that after the session, they could be able to individually find reliable information about a drug.

Conclusion

The session altered how first year medical student viewed encounters with pharmaceutical representatives. Their perceptions of the information and interactions with pharmaceutical representatives changed during the session, and they learned methods to individually find reliable information about a drug. Further analysis and investigation into educating first year medical students on the pharmaceutical industry is recommended.

Support or Funding Information

This study was not supported by a grant and has been approved by FIU IRB.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.