How to tell a drug rep to shut up?

Specialties NP

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How do you politely tell a drug rep to shut up?

What really gets me is when they tell me to check to DNS box! If the patient wants brand name they'll ask the damn PharmD!

Other than that my interactions with drug reps are good, they are knowlegable about their drug, they give me free stuff (expensive lunches, dinners, very nice pt education handouts).

But sometimes when eating I think, 'In the hour I'm sitting here taking about drugs, which feels like work, if I was working I would have made more than enough to pay for the same meal for me and my girlfriend.

Just a ranting NP.

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

cgfnp - I so totally agree with you! I too give generics, investigate the pts part D plan prior to prescribing, find substitutes, etc..

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cgfnp - I so totally agree with you! I too give generics, investigate the pts part D plan prior to prescribing, find substitutes, etc..

If all providers would do this there'd be enough money in the system for everyone to have free medicine no matter what. Medicare part D is a joke, and a slap in the face to our seniors, all of whom were in some way affected by a war 100 times more horrific than we are bitching about today.

This will happen, but unfortunately, it will be made by politicians instead of healthcare savvy people so it will come with many more negatives forcing a great many of us out of healthcare altogether and costing many people their lives (ie wait-listed for a heart cath).

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Asking their credentials is a very very quick way. But I must say I still have my pink Dobutamine T shirt from the 80's-I think.

Actually I did learn from a recent "lecture" on the Alzeimer's meds!

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i hate drug reps. i'm a device rep...hate them, too!!

can't wait to start working on my bsn...

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We had a lot of drug reps and dinners at my clinical site. They would have given these MD's anything to write more scripts for their brand. They were able to keep track which doc had written the most prescriptions for them and they would suck up or push the ones that hadn't written as many. I think the thing that got me the most is the misinformation they would disseminate. The avandia and treating at blood sugars of 100 was horrible.

The web site www.nofreelunch.org has some good info regarding drug reps and a movie I got at a website www.moneytalksthemovie.com is excellent.

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Specializes in Geriatrics/Family Practice.

Everyone speaks of prescribing generics only because they are cheaper. Well as the drug reps show us, name brand are more expensive mostly because we get free stuff, free lunches, dinners and pens. If you took all the money they used for all that free stuff and the cost of paying all the drug reps that need to be paid then name brand wouldn't have to be so expensive. You as NP's or MD's know your drugs and if you have a question you call a Rph. I'm not dismissing drug reps and there free lunches (I love food), it's just kind of ironic how it all works and how costs are driven up. At the clinic I work at there are a set of doctors who will not except lunches or their speeches, just there drugs. They figure they are contributing to lowering the cost of medications.

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My program is teaching us to take into account how the patient is paying for their health care and their drugs when prescribing. Very smart. Generics are the way to go, except for the rare exception.

I just read a book, "How Doctors Think" by Jeremy Groopman MD. You have to get past his self-referential glorification of the wonderfulness and awesomeness of MDs in society, and the fact he ignores NPs and CNMs. Past that, it's a great book written for laypeople about clinical decision making and how difficult it is. This same guy was interviewed by the New Yorker a few months ago; great article about clinical decision making, which is near and dear to all our little hearts, no? :) The book has a great chapter on the ethics and daily dilemma MDs face with drug reps and pharmaceutical companies.

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I usually listen to "some" of their diatribe and then thank them for their time, usually by lying and telling them I have to return phone calls etc. I never write for brand names if I can help it due to the cost factor. Any one of us who has been at the receiving line of the cost of drugs knows the financial impact it can have. Their are also the annoying, obnoxious reps that I refuse to chat with, the ones that tell me their drug is the best and don't use any others. Those are the same ones that I tell, "funny thats what the last rep from the other company said".

HA! HA! HA! HA! that's a good one:yeah:

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No free lunch

No free products

No free / discounted CEU opportunities

etc..,

etc..

On can choose to

A) Listen and take the free stuff

B) Listen and decline the free stuff

C) Ask for the free stuff only

D) Say no thanks to it all

I would guess large chunk medical discoveries lately have a drug manufacture involved.... They are in business to make money and we are in business to make money. How many of us do what we do for free?

Not a perfect world but every drug dinner I have ever went to:

1) Ate (99.5% great meals)

2) At least two hours talking with other area: physicians, PAs, NPs, RNs....

3) 30-40 minutes of why our drug works, how it works, etc.

Actually a couple of the doctors in our group also have their PharmD and one of the doctors is married to a PhamD and they have no qualms about throwing the reps a curve ball.

Also in the office there is nothing like seeing a perturbed doctor; chew up and spit out a representative as only a doctor can.

:twocents:

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oops double post

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No free lunch

One can choose to

A) Listen and take the free stuff

B) Listen and decline the free stuff

C) Ask for the free stuff only

D) Say no thanks to it all

Not a perfect world but every drug dinner I have ever went to:

1) Ate (99.5% great meals)

2) At least two hours talking with other area: physicians, PAs, NPs, RNs....

3) 30-40 minutes of why our drug works, how it works, etc.

:twocents:

One can also choose not only to say no but to urge others to stop padding their patients' bills by forcing them to pay for your "drug dinner." Because that's just what you're doing when you accept food and anything else from a drug company. Just say no!

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Specializes in CTICU.
Also in the office there is nothing like seeing a perturbed doctor; chew up and spit out a representative as only a doctor can.

Having worked for a device company as an educator (not a sales rep), I don't understand this attitude. Most of the time, it just makes you look like a jerk when you set out to make someone else look dumb.

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