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The Unprofessional Relationship between Medical Doctors and Pharmaceutical Companies

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The relationship between doctors and medical or corporate representatives is an old time practice in which the corporate representative primary goal is to directly inform the medical profession of the company’s products. There is nothing wrong with this practice, but it becomes situational when the medical representative is being offered financial incentives or on the company’s pay policy. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline publicized that they stop paying physicians to promote their products and try new marketing strategies (article 1). GlaxoSmithKline’s new policy is an improvement from the ethical standpoint because the relationship between the two parties are tainted and no longer a respectable relationship. This essay reviews the aspects …show more content…

Thus, the action taken by GlaxoSmithKline to stop paying medical doctors to promote their products and no longer compensating their sales representatives on the basis of prescriptions generated is an ethical approach to a corrupted practice (article 1). The company states they will focus on the technical information of their product, and quality of service to health professionals (article 1). Also this action displays confidence on the company’s part of what potential good can their drug do for patients. However, it takes to two to tango. The medical doctors are in equal share of the blame as the pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies providing financial incentives to medical doctors brings up the question about whether paying doctors to market drugs can inappropriately influence what they prescribe. Obviously, the use of small tokens to larger tokens of gifts does cause a person feel like they an obligation to repay them back and in this case for pharmaceutical companies, it would be to prescribe their drug. Physicians need to stop being naïve and quit proclaiming that marketing does not influence their decision. The use of pens and trips to Hawaii is not to persuade their logical, critical thinking of the clinical benefits of the product to the patients, but to buy their souls. These incentives are used to cultivate a

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