Univ. of Pennsylvania Hospital gets tough with drug firm reps

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

pennsylvania hospitals get tough with drug firm reps

like other health system leaders unhappy with practices of drug representatives, officials at the University of Pennsylvania medical center are considering banning them from talking to doctors at their three hospitals.

[hypnotic_nurse]

At one psych department I worked for, reps were banned from leaving any goodies. Yes, the university provided pens for us, but those drug rep pens are the best...I did miss them.

I do understand the reasoning, though; our department chair wanted to make sure that we were not making our patients think that one drug was better than another, or that we were in collusion with the drug companies.

[SusanJean]

Drug reps have continued to be problematic in hospitals for yrs. From experience, I can tell you a few can ruin it for the majority that follow rules and procedures.

But today there is another problem that should be addressed: direct to consumer advertising. The pharmaceutical companies now spend up to 75% of their marketing budgets on DTC ads. Why? They pay off. There is little to no reason for this and it takes up a hugh amount of nurse/doc time plus resource on expensive products.

I'd worry more about the DTC than free pens.