Perry Joshua E, Cox Dena, Cox Anthony D
Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics and a Research Coordinator in the Center for the Business of Life Sciences at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.
J Law Med Ethics. 2014 Winter;42(4):475-91. doi: 10.1111/jlme.12169.
Financial ties between physicians and pharmaceutical companies are pervasive and controversial. However, little is known about how patients perceive such ties. This paper describes an experiment examining how a national sample of U.S. adults perceived a variety of financial relationships between physicians and drug companies. Each respondent read a single scenario about a hypothetical physician and his financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry; scenarios varied in terms of payment type of (e.g., payment for meals vs. consulting fees) and amount. Respondents then evaluated the physician on several dimensions (e.g., expertise, trustworthiness, knowledge of new treatments, moral character, focus on patients' interests). Findings revealed that perceptions of the physician were more strongly influenced by payment type than by payment amount. Specifically, respondents were quite critical of doctors who owned drug company stock or received industry payments for meals and lodging, but were more forgiving of physicians who received free drug samples (which were perceived as benefiting patients) or consulting fees (which were seen as signaling physician expertise). Interestingly, physicians who received no payments, while seen as honest, were also viewed by some respondents as inexperienced or uninformed about new treatments. Implications for public policy and future research are discussed.
医生与制药公司之间的经济联系普遍存在且颇具争议。然而，患者如何看待这种联系却鲜为人知。本文描述了一项实验，该实验考察了美国成年人全国样本如何看待医生与制药公司之间的各种经济关系。每位受访者阅读了一个关于假设医生及其与制药行业经济联系的情景；情景在支付类型（如餐费支付与咨询费）和金额方面有所不同。受访者随后在几个维度上对医生进行了评估（如专业知识、可信度、对新疗法的了解、道德品质、对患者利益的关注）。研究结果显示，对医生的看法受支付类型的影响比对支付金额的影响更大。具体而言，受访者对持有制药公司股票或接受行业支付的餐费和住宿费的医生相当批评，但对接受免费药品样品（被视为使患者受益）或咨询费（被视为表明医生专业知识）的医生则更为宽容。有趣的是，没有获得报酬的医生虽然被视为诚实，但一些受访者也认为他们缺乏经验或对新疗法了解不足。文中讨论了对公共政策和未来研究的启示。
