Most of the doctors I know have, at one time or another,\u00a0responded to\u00a0a web-based \u201csurvey\u201d. While I have tried not to make a second career out of it, I will admit that I have on occasion done a survey in between patients, at lunch, or at the end of the day.\u00a0 They usually\u00a0take\u00a05 to\u00a040 minutes and ask for your opinion on\u00a0the desirability of a potential new medication or about the frequency of your interaction with a particular pharmaceutical sales force.\u00a0 The incentive is usually cash, anywhere from $15 to $100,\u00a0depending on the time required.<\/p>\n
Recently though, I participated in a survey on anti-platelet therapies that seemed different.\u00a0 I indicated at the beginning of the survey that I had little experience with drug X.\u00a0 The first part of the \u201csurvey\u201d consisted of advertisements and studies in support of this drug (which is already on the market).\u00a0 The question\u00a0section asked me to rate the ads based on clarity and believability. At the end of the program, I was asked if viewing these ads would make me more likely to use drug X.<\/p>\n
I have to admit that I felt somewhat tricked. This \u201csurvey\u201d\u00a0seemed more like a forme fruste<\/em> of e-detailing.\u00a0 Is it a coincidence that most of the major pharmaceutical companies have recently undergone massive layoffs of their sales staff?<\/p>\n The idea of being paid for my opinion on the applicability or name of an investigational drug\u00a0seems innocuous enough.\u00a0 But being compensated to view a unilateral\u00a0promotional pitch\u00a0for an established drug\u00a0that I am in a position to prescribe seemed to cross a line.\u00a0 And while it felt strange to me, is it really any different than listening to a drug rep over a free lunch?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most of the doctors I know have, at one time or another,\u00a0responded to\u00a0a web-based \u201csurvey\u201d. While I have tried not to make a second career out of it, I will admit that I have on occasion done a survey in between patients, at lunch, or at the end of the day.\u00a0 They usually\u00a0take\u00a05 to\u00a040 minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":361,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[626],"class_list":["post-5462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-relations-with-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}