Drug reps and Pharmaceutical dinners

Wednesday, February 04, 2004 The world of drug reps and drug company sponsored dinners

I am learning that drug reps can be a great source of information. However, one has to learn how to ‘exploit’ this resource just right. I am not talking about exploiting them literally. I am referring to learning and getting as much knowledge as I can for the benefit of my patients. I had an interesting experience this afternoon. The rep from Zoloft came over. Since my attending was busy, I talked to her for a bit. She gave me a brochure that showed a study comparing weight gains with Zoloft compared to Paxil. The graphs showed that patients on Zoloft had a much lower weight gain than patients on Paxil. Okay; A hour or so later, the Paxil rep showed up. She spied the Zoloft literature on the table and asked me about it. I shared the results of the study with her and asked her about the weight gain issue. Well, she produced another full-color brochure with a different study comparing the effect of patients taking Paxil to placebo. Her study showed that patients on Paxil actually had less weight gain than patients on placebo. It was an interesting contradiction – the two studies showing opposite findings. The next day, the rep from Wellbutrin came over. She had some things to say about Zoloft and Paxil and compared them to Wellbutrin. I think that if one listens critically, one can learn quite a bit from the comparative assessment. Finally, I asked my attending what he thought about these drugs and what his experience was using them. All this coupled with reading the relevant chapters in Blueprints in Psychiatry made for a good pharmacology learning experience. Moral of the story: learning to critically evaluate facts, studies and such and drawing the best conclusions.

Today I also got to go to my first drug-company sponsored dinner talk. It was held at a fine restaurant in Bricktown. I arrived at the restaurant to find about 20 people. I sat with an elder Indian couple – husband a general surgeon and wife a psychiatrist at the VA. The speaker was an asst. professor from USC, LA. He spoke about the use of Risperdone in bipolar disorder. The talk was in PowerPoint and interesting. He made disclosure that he was a consultant and speaker for several drug companies. The food was great – lobster brisque, cold water lobster tail, cheesecake, pasta. I loved it. After the talk, we all went our separate ways. I kind of enjoyed being a medical student/future doctor this evening. One wonders about the ethics of such things. Surely, the good treatment and food softens one up a bit to the drug reps and the companies and products they represent. It probably doesn't hurt either that most of the reps are pretty, well-groomed (well nourished and in no apparent distress, but I digress) and seem to flirt and flatter a little as they deal with us. Maybe that's just marketing...