Survey Examines Doctors' Views on Drug 'Freebies'

MONDAY, Oct. 2 (HealthDay News) -- One in three U.S. doctors believe that free drug samples likely influence which medicines are prescribed to patients, according to a survey published in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

The survey of 217 members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also found that more than 90 percent of them believed it was ethical to accept free samples of new drugs from a pharmaceutical company representative.

Slightly more than 50 percent of the respondents thought it was ethical to accept a lucrative consultancy with a drug company if they were a "high volume" prescriber of one of that company's drugs.

Many of the respondents thought that other doctors would be much more likely than themselves to accept drug company incentives -- such as a free lunch, a consultancy, or an anatomical model displaying the name of a drug -- even if the incentives were offered without free drug samples.

Many of the doctors said freebies would influence other physicians' prescribing habits more than their own.

According to the poll, most doctors said they distributed free drug samples to patients in order to help them out financially or for their convenience. Less than two-thirds of the doctors said they gave the free drug samples to patients because they felt the drugs were particularly effective.

Only one in three of the respondents agreed that guidelines on the relationship between the drug industry and doctors should be more tightly regulated, and two-fifths said this relationship did not need tighter restrictions.

"The generally held view that accepting modest incentive items, such as drug samples, is appropriate and primarily of benefit to patients needs to be reconsidered, both by doctors and by policy makers," the study authors wrote.