According to the NYT's "Well" blog, drug companies will voluntarily back off dumping buckets of pens, post-it pads, clocks, and other cheapo-pharm-schwag into the hands of doctor-advertisers:
Clipboards, pens and mugs emblazoned with drug company logos are about to become collectors’ items. The pharmaceutical industry’s trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, has issued a new voluntary code of conduct that prohibits distributing the brand-adorned freebies to the nation’s doctors.Glory be. I feel fortunate to have spent the last three years in a pharma-free residency program, and I regularly toss drug-logoed crap directly into the trash whenever I find it lying around (in doctors lounges, waiting rooms, etc). The clinical years of medical school featured daily lunches
from drug reps (I ate them) and as much junk as you could grab: pens, stethoscope covers, measuring tapes, hand sanitizer, flashlights, scissors, stress balls, reflex hammers, mouse pads. So much clutter. My absolute favorite, while it lasted, was the Viagra pen: hefty, firm, metal shaft. Alas, it didn't measure up to a simple Bic Ultra or Uniball Deluxe Micro. The mighty stylo phallique cracked after just a couple of admission H&P write-ups. Junk.By the middle of my fourth year, my fascination with free stuff and bad lunches was pretty much over, and I started to read the medical literature on the effect of drug reps on prescribing practices: turns out they do all this stuff because it works! It wasn't hard to remove reps from my life, especially after joining a non-rep-friendly residency.
As Tara Parker-Pope points out in her blog, getting rid of cheap tchochkie's printed with expensive brand name drug names isn't the same thing as cutting out speaking fees to physicians and informational dinners at El Gaucho, but it might un-clutter health care a little.
