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Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND: A training physician has his first interaction with a pharmaceutical representative during medical school. Medical students are often provided with small gifts such as pens, calendars and books, as well as free lunches as part of drug promotion offers. Ethical impact of these transaction...

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Autores principales: Siddiqui, Usman Tariq, Shakoor, Amarah, Kiani, Sarah, Ali, Farwa, Sharif, Maryam, Kumar, Arun, Raza, Qasim, Khan, Naseer, Alamzaib, Sardar Mohammed, Farid-ul-Husnain, Syed
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101871/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885167
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-36
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author Siddiqui, Usman Tariq
Shakoor, Amarah
Kiani, Sarah
Ali, Farwa
Sharif, Maryam
Kumar, Arun
Raza, Qasim
Khan, Naseer
Alamzaib, Sardar Mohammed
Farid-ul-Husnain, Syed
author_facet Siddiqui, Usman Tariq
Shakoor, Amarah
Kiani, Sarah
Ali, Farwa
Sharif, Maryam
Kumar, Arun
Raza, Qasim
Khan, Naseer
Alamzaib, Sardar Mohammed
Farid-ul-Husnain, Syed
author_sort Siddiqui, Usman Tariq
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: A training physician has his first interaction with a pharmaceutical representative during medical school. Medical students are often provided with small gifts such as pens, calendars and books, as well as free lunches as part of drug promotion offers. Ethical impact of these transactions as perceived by young medical students has not been investigated in Pakistan before. This study aimed to assess the association of socio-demographic variables with the attitudes of medical students towards pharmaceutical companies and their incentives. METHODS: As part of a cross-sectional survey, a validated questionnaire previously used for assessing attitude of medical students towards pharmaceutical industry, was modified, pre-tested and distributed among consenting clinical year students at DUHS and AKU. Questions included acceptability of pharmaceutically sponsored gifts, events and tuition fee, and their impact on future prescription. Responses were graded as agree, disagree or neutral which were then scored according to the AMSA guidelines of ethical conduct. RESULTS: Out of a total of 353 targeted students 303 responded, corresponding to a response rate of 85.8%. Responses indicated that 42.7% students believed in no interaction with drug companies during medical school. However, 81% of students favored pharmaceutical sponsorship of student-body events/seminars at medical colleges. More than one-third of the students were comfortable receiving gifts from drug companies. Overall, the results of this study offer an interesting comparison between the students of a private medical school (AKU) and a public medical school (DUHS); AKU students exhibited a greater degree of mistrust towards drug information provided by pharmaceutical companies compared to DUHS students (p = 0.040). Furthermore, when asked if there was a need to incorporate guidelines in the undergraduate curriculum with regard to interaction with drug companies, 84.2% students at AKU agreed, compared to 54.9% at DUHS. Medical student Attitude Scores are more or less similar to each other independent of their various demographical differences. CONCLUSION: This study highlights that medical students in our population have a high level of acceptability towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical industry and that formal guidance regarding the subject should be incorporated into medical curriculum.
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spelling pubmed-41018712014-07-18 Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study Siddiqui, Usman Tariq Shakoor, Amarah Kiani, Sarah Ali, Farwa Sharif, Maryam Kumar, Arun Raza, Qasim Khan, Naseer Alamzaib, Sardar Mohammed Farid-ul-Husnain, Syed BMC Med Ethics Research Article BACKGROUND: A training physician has his first interaction with a pharmaceutical representative during medical school. Medical students are often provided with small gifts such as pens, calendars and books, as well as free lunches as part of drug promotion offers. Ethical impact of these transactions as perceived by young medical students has not been investigated in Pakistan before. This study aimed to assess the association of socio-demographic variables with the attitudes of medical students towards pharmaceutical companies and their incentives. METHODS: As part of a cross-sectional survey, a validated questionnaire previously used for assessing attitude of medical students towards pharmaceutical industry, was modified, pre-tested and distributed among consenting clinical year students at DUHS and AKU. Questions included acceptability of pharmaceutically sponsored gifts, events and tuition fee, and their impact on future prescription. Responses were graded as agree, disagree or neutral which were then scored according to the AMSA guidelines of ethical conduct. RESULTS: Out of a total of 353 targeted students 303 responded, corresponding to a response rate of 85.8%. Responses indicated that 42.7% students believed in no interaction with drug companies during medical school. However, 81% of students favored pharmaceutical sponsorship of student-body events/seminars at medical colleges. More than one-third of the students were comfortable receiving gifts from drug companies. Overall, the results of this study offer an interesting comparison between the students of a private medical school (AKU) and a public medical school (DUHS); AKU students exhibited a greater degree of mistrust towards drug information provided by pharmaceutical companies compared to DUHS students (p = 0.040). Furthermore, when asked if there was a need to incorporate guidelines in the undergraduate curriculum with regard to interaction with drug companies, 84.2% students at AKU agreed, compared to 54.9% at DUHS. Medical student Attitude Scores are more or less similar to each other independent of their various demographical differences. CONCLUSION: This study highlights that medical students in our population have a high level of acceptability towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical industry and that formal guidance regarding the subject should be incorporated into medical curriculum. BioMed Central 2014-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4101871/ /pubmed/24885167 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-36 Text en Copyright © 2014 Siddiqui et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Siddiqui, Usman Tariq
Shakoor, Amarah
Kiani, Sarah
Ali, Farwa
Sharif, Maryam
Kumar, Arun
Raza, Qasim
Khan, Naseer
Alamzaib, Sardar Mohammed
Farid-ul-Husnain, Syed
Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title_full Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title_fullStr Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title_short Attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
title_sort attitudes of medical students towards incentives offered by pharmaceutical companies- perspective from a developing nation- a cross sectional study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4101871/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885167
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-36
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