Ethical Standards in the Promotion of Medications: Assessment of the State and Prospects of Development

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the content of printed advertising materials for compliance with ethical principles and standards for the promotion of medicinal products (MP). Materials and methods. The object of the research was the promotion of medications using printed advertisements about medications. Considered 200 samples of printed materials in the form of leaflets, booklets and leaflets received by health professionals from medical representatives in pharmacies and clinics in Voronezh..Structural and content analysis, comparative, mathematical and statistical analysis, as well as methods of generalization and systematization were used. Results. It was found that the ethical principles and norms of drug promotion when using printed advertising materials are performed in fragments - only 2 printed materials (1% of the study population) met all eleven WHO criteria, and 26 samples met 10 ethical criteria (13%) and 104 (52%) met 50% of the criteria. According to the criterion “Names of excipients that can cause unwanted reactions”, the greatest discrepancy was found, only 14% of the samples provided the necessary information. Conclusion. Printed advertising materials about medicinal products, as the most common method of promoting medicinal products, contain incomplete or unbalanced data on medicinal products in terms of compliance with the ethical principles of promoting medicinal products as the basis for their rational use. This can contribute to a decrease in the effectiveness of the drug, as a result, an increase in the financial and time costs of treatment, as well as the occurrence of unwanted side reactions. A promising direction for solving this problem is the development of special requirements for the structure and content of printed advertising materials about drugs based on instructions for the use of drugs and ethical criteria for promoting recommended by WHO and the AIMP Code of Good Practice.