Characteristics of general practitioners who frequently see drug industry representatives: national cross sectional study

General Practitioners’ willingness to Pay for Continuing Medical Education in a Fee-for-service Universal Coverage Health Care System

“…This could not only help reduce potential influence of life science companies on physicians without modifying current sponsoring, but it could also possibly increase physicians WTP for medical meetings. Physicians who see sales representatives more often tend to be those who are more isolated from their colleagues [18].…”

“…Most medical meetings are partially or fully sponsored by life science companies, resulting in lower participation fees for physicians. Ongoing discussions in the medical literature are questioning whether this form of industrial marketing does not lead to potential drawbacks including conflict of interest as well as direct and indirect commercial products promotion through altered disease management and prescribing habits bias [7], possibly contributing to the rise of national health costs [8,9]. This question is even more relevant in Switzerland, a country with a health care system combining fee for service and universal health insurance coverage, and where national health costs accounted for 10.8% of GDP in 2010 and are estimated at 11.9% of GDP in 2016 [1].…”

Corporate funding and conflicts of interest: A primer for psychologists.

“…• Meeting with pharmaceutical representatives (Shapiro, 2004;Watkins et al, 2003), attending industry sponsored CE, accepting travel or lodging funds, and attending presentations by pharmaceutical representatives all lead to nonrational prescribing practices (Appleby, 2001b;Coyle, 2002a;Dember, 2001;Hall, 2001;Torassa, 2002;Wazana, 2000).…”

Pharmaceutical representatives’ beliefs and practices about their professional practice: a study in Sudan

“…They are an important promotional tool for pharmaceutical companies and the influence of sales representatives on doctors' prescribing behaviour is well documented in the literature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Watkins et al found that doctors who have frequent contact with pharmaceutical representatives are usually more willing to prescribe new drugs and tend not to end consultations with just advice to patients [11].…”

“…They are an important promotional tool for pharmaceutical companies and the influence of sales representatives on doctors' prescribing behaviour is well documented in the literature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Watkins et al found that doctors who have frequent contact with pharmaceutical representatives are usually more willing to prescribe new drugs and tend not to end consultations with just advice to patients [11]. Studies from several countries showed that 80% to 90% of doctors regularly see pharmaceutical representatives despite evidence that their information is overly positive and doctors' prescribing habits are less appropriate as a result [6][7][8][9][10].…”