A COMPARISON OF PHYSICIANS AND PATIENTS ATTITUDES TOWARD PHARMACEUTICAL-INDUSTRY GIFTS

OBJECTIVE: To compare physicians' and their patients' attitudes toward pharmaceutical gifts. DESIGN: Survey of physicians and their patients . SETTING:Two tertiary-care medical centers, one military and one civi lian. PARTICIPANTS:Two hundred sixty-eight of 392 consecutively survey ed physicians, 100 of 103 randomly selected patients at the military c enter, and 96 patients in a convenience sample at the civilian center completed the survey. MEASUREMENTS: Participants rated 10 pharmaceutic al gifts on whether they were appropriate for physicians to accept and whether they were likely to influence prescribing. Patients found gif ts less appropriate and more influential than did their physicians. Ab out half of the patients were aware of such gifts; of those unaware, 2 4% responded that this knowledge altered their perception of the medic al profession. Asked whether they thought their own physician accepted gifts, 27% said yes, 20% no, and 53% were unsure. For patients, feeli ng that gifts were inappropriate was best predicted by a belief that g ifts might influence prescribing, while for physicians, the best predi ctor was knowledge of guidelines. CONCLUSIONS: Patients feel pharmaceu tical gifts are more influential and less appropriate than do their ph ysicians. Physicians may want to consider this in deciding whether to accept particular gifts. Broader dissemination of guidelines may be on e means of changing physician behavior. At the same time, future guide lines should further consider the potentially different viewpoints of patients and physicians.