Encounters with pharmaceutical sales representatives among practicing internists

BACKGROUND: Although pharmaceutical sales representatives provide physician s with information on new products, these encounters have rarely been studi ed in practice settings. We examined these interactions among practicing in ternists and assessed whether Drier residency policies limiting pharmaceuti cal sales representative access affected the subsequent behavior of practit ioners. METHODS: We conducted a mail survey of the internal medicine staffs of a me dical school hospital and two affiliated community hospitals. A second requ est was sent to nonresponders. After the second mailing, a random sample of nonresponders was compared with a similar sample of respondents. Multivari ate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated with logistic regression. RESULTS: Of the 346 (40%) internists who responded, 22% were women and 60% were trained in university hospitals. There were no differences in gender, subspecialization, or type of training when survey responders and nonrespon ders were compared. Two hundred eighty-seven (83%) physicians had met with pharmaceutical sales representatives within the previous year, of whom 248 (86%) had received drug samples. Having had a policy that limited access to pharmaceutical sales representatives during residency did not affect the s ubsequent likelihood of seeing these representatives (P = 0.20) or acceptin g samples in practice (P = 0.99). Those describing themselves as busy pract itioners were significantly less likely to abstain from meeting pharmaceuti cal sales representatives (OR = 0.2, 95% CI: 0.1 to 0.6, P <0.001). Those w ith very frequent contacts (>10 times/month) were virtually all busy practi tioners. CONCLUSIONS: Encounters between physicians and pharmaceutical sales represe ntatives are common in internal medicine practice, especially in busy offic es. Policies designed to limit pharmaceutical sales representative access d uring residency do not appear to affect the subsequent likelihood of meetin g with pharmaceutical sales representatives or accepting samples. (C) 1999 by Excerpta Medica, Inc.