A Free Lunch?

My employer has a strict policy about not accepting any gifts from drug reps. We can't even take a cheap pen or pad of paper, so why is it that I got a nice Thai lunch today courtesy of a drug company? It's not that my boss didn't know about it because she sat next to me at lunch. She even arranged it.

We weren't told who was paying for the lunch, but I became suspicious when some man who looked like a salesman came in the room and started setting up some kind of presentation. The name of a drug was on display and when asked when he wanted to start his lecture, he said that he wanted to wait until we all had food in our mouths. Lunch was going to arrive in ten minutes.

Red flags were waiving. We can be fired for this kind of thing, not that I was worried about that happening with all of the big wigs partaking in the feast too.

I asked my boss if the drug company was paying for lunch. She said that they were. I asked, teasingly, if I was going to have to call the 24 hr. corporate compliance hot line to report this. She said that if I did, I would have to vomit to return what I was eating. She had a point.

My boss said that it was okay to accept this drug company gift because the drug was already on our formulary. We supposedly are only barred from accepting gifts from companies pushing selling drugs that we don't already prescribe.

The reason behind the rule is to avoid being influenced by drug company gifts. If you use a pen for several weeks with the name of a drug on it. It might have some effect, either consciously or subconsciously, on deciding what drug to prescribe. A good meal with a lecture explaining why a certain drug is better than a competitor's drug has the same effect of perhaps clouding independent judgment.

The drug rep was doing his best to explain why his drug was as good as the competitor's drug but for less money. He wanted us to prescribe his drug more often. I fail to see the distinction between what he was doing and a drug company trying to sell us a drug that we don't yet have on our formulary. It's all just selling and trying to influence our prescribing decisions.

It was a good lunch, but a waste of money for the drug company. Nurses don't prescribe drugs.