Pharm Advertising
Reduction of Malpractice
One of the key manners in which direct-to-physician advertising of pharmaceuticals can lead to health promotion is in the reduction of malpractice on the part of physicians when it comes to the administering of pharmaceuticals. It is of course the primarily (and ultimately, solely) the physicians' responsibility to ensure the proper and effective use of pharmaceutical products, just as it is their responsibility to ensure that all care practices and interventions are in the best interests of the patient. Pharmaceutical companies have this goal and this responsibility as well, however, and they can be instrumental in making sure that true best interests are served with current knowledge of best practices and new potentials. As advertising is ultimately the provision of information, it can be seen that the direct advertising of pharmaceuticals to physicians can provide more comprehensive, detailed, and current information regarding new products, new uses, and the risks and benefits of specific pharmaceutical agents. The direct advertising constitutes an information-sharing relationship, and arming physicians with better information can only serve to assist them in their quest to achieve the best results for their patients (Schwartz et al., 2009).
While concerns have been raised about direct and even indirect financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies/drug representatives and physicians, it has also been noted that physicians can depend on the information provided by drug representatives to make decisions based on the most current available information (Matthews, 2007; Schwartz et al., 2009). At the same time, not all or even most physicians recognize the level of influence that the information provided by pharmaceutical companies in regards to their products can have on the prescription habits of physicians, though these influences have been measured and reported in numerous studies (Matthews, 2007). Promoting physician awareness of pharmaceutical advertising as a means of gathering relevant information and then consciously applying this information could help them make more effective decisions and provide greater clarity and transparency in the pharmaceutical representative/physician relationship, both of which could lead to greater levels of health promotion in patients and therefore reduced incidence and accusations of malpractice.
Direct-to-physician advertising need not only be utilized in the promotion of more effective pharmaceutical use in terms of encouraging prescription use, but also when it comes to preventing misuse of prescriptions. Off-label prescribing has been a major concern in the medical community and advertising off-label uses has been strictly prohibited by law, and thus any direct-to-physician advertising would necessarily be directed towards encouraging the proper and approved use of pharmacological agents, which would necessarily discourage off-label uses and prescriptions (Klasmeier & Redish, 2011). In this manner, direct-to-physician advertising works to limit potential malpractice claims and accusations as well as truly negative events from both ends, promoting the effective and proper use of medications and defining the limits of use to ensure that medications are not prescribed for situations that they are not suited to. This relates directly to one of the most pressing ways in which direct-to-physician advertising can reduce malpractice: the presentation of research.
Pharmaceutical advertising that appears in medical journals affects malpractice potentials in two primary ways. First, the advertising itself typically contains detailed information about the specific pharmacological agents being advertised, including the results of evaluational research conducted in clinical trials and practice, providing in a concise and widely-read and -- disseminated form all of the information that a physician needs to make a responsible and effective decision based on the information that is currently available (Rotfield & Taylor, 2009). This direct-to-physician advertising is actually far more preferable to direct-to-consumer advertising in terms of ensuring that proper decisions are being made, and that malpractice potentials are being reduced or avoided through the increased knowledge and competence of the decision makers (Nguyen, 2010). Second, the pharmaceutical advertising published in medical journals is a major source of the revenue that these journals need in order to remain operational, and so in a slightly indirect manner the pharmaceutical industry and the direct-to-physician advertising it engages in are responsible for maintaining adequate levels of information flowing within the medical community, which has a profound impact on health promotion and the ability of physicians to reduce malpractice potential through the adoption of best practices (Gagnon & Lexchin, 2008). The research contained in these journals covers all imaginable medical issues and areas, and thus it is clear that direct-to-physician advertising promotes the use of evaluational research in clinical practice.
Cost Analysis in Direct-to-Physician Advertising
There are other ways that direct-to-physician advertising can alter malpractice potentials and otherwise...
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