Makowska Marta
Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Ul. Nowoursynowska 166, 02-787, Warsaw, Poland.
BMC Med Ethics. 2017 Aug 10;18(1):49. doi: 10.1186/s12910-017-0208-7.
Medical schools have a major impact on future doctors' ethics and their attitudes towards cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry. From childhood, medical students who are related to a physician are exposed to the characteristics of a medical career and learn its professional ethics not only in school but also in the family setting. The present paper sought to answer the research question: 'How does growing up with a physician influence medical students' perceptions of conflicts of interest in their relationships with industry?'
An anonymous questionnaire was completed by 451 medical students from four Philadelphia medical schools and 554 medical students from Warsaw Medical University during 2013. Medical schools in these two cities were chosen because they are both university cities with similar population sizes. Students who had and who did not have a family member working as a physician were compared using chi-square analysis. Data were analysed for each country separately.
For both the US and Poland, there were statistically significant differences (p < .05) between medical students with a physician as a family member and other students with respect to views regarding relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. In both groups, this difference occurred for three important dimensions: students' relationship with the pharmaceutical industry; students' views on physicians' rights to cooperate with the pharmaceutical industry; trust in the pharmaceutical industry. In the US, students related to a doctor were characterized by more restrictive opinions on all three dimensions than other students (e.g., 27.8% of the former students vs. 31.4% of the latter students thought doctors had unrestricted rights to cooperate with the industry). However, the contrary was observed in Poland: students with a physician in the family had less strict views than their colleagues (e.g., 56.8% of the former vs. 39.7% of the latter thought that doctors should have unrestricted rights of cooperation).
In Poland, a former communist country, physicians transmit a more liberal approach towards collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry to their student relatives than those in the US.
医学院校对未来医生的职业道德以及他们与制药行业合作的态度有着重大影响。从童年起，与医生有关系的医学生就接触到医疗职业的特点，不仅在学校，而且在家庭环境中学习职业道德。本文试图回答研究问题：“与医生一起长大如何影响医学生对其与行业关系中利益冲突的认知？”
2013年期间，来自费城四所医学院的451名医学生和华沙医科大学的554名医学生完成了一份匿名问卷。选择这两个城市的医学院校是因为它们都是人口规模相似的大学城。使用卡方分析比较了有家庭成员是医生和没有家庭成员是医生的学生。分别对每个国家的数据进行了分析。
在美国和波兰，有医生家庭成员的医学生与其他学生在对与制药行业关系的看法上均存在统计学显著差异（p <.05）。在两组中，这种差异出现在三个重要维度上：学生与制药行业的关系；学生对医生与制药行业合作权利的看法；对制药行业的信任。在美国，与医生有关系的学生在所有三个维度上的看法比其他学生更为严格（例如，前者中有27.8%的学生认为医生有不受限制的与行业合作的权利，而后者中有31.4%的学生这样认为）。然而，在波兰观察到的情况则相反：有医生家庭成员的学生比他们的同学看法更宽松（例如，前者中有56.8%的学生认为医生应该有不受限制的合作权利，而后者中有39.7%的学生这样认为）。
在波兰这个前共产主义国家，医生向其学生亲属传递的是比美国医生更为宽松的与制药行业合作的态度。
