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Marketing of pharmaceutical products: nurses now being targeted too

As nurses’ responsibilities expand to include the prescription of medical devices, pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies are increasingly targeting them.

Pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies are increasingly aimed at nurses, now that nurses are authorised to prescribe medical devices, and there is a trend towards transferring more responsibilities from doctors to nurses. Nurses are also in the position of being close both to patients and doctors.

A new survey has been carried out to identify nurses’ perceptions of pharmaceutical companies’ potential influence on their knowledge and practices.

Like doctors and students in other studies, 50% of the nurses questioned believe they are capable of distinguishing misleading information. But most of them stated that their colleagues might be influenced by  companies.

75% of the nurses questioned stated that they had received gifts from pharmaceuticals companies, and over 50% said they had attended a meal or a buffet organised by a pharmaceutical company. Most of them felt that this was acceptable, with or without conditions attached.

Some added that, since these practices were considered acceptable by doctors, then they were also acceptable for nurses.

Prescrire urges the nursing profession, just as it urges doctors and pharmacists, to think hard about what attitude they should adopt toward marketing efforts by the pharmaceuticals industry.

©Prescrire August 2010

"Pharmaceutical marketing: nurses also targeted" Prescrire Int 2010; 19 (108):190 (pdf, subscribers only).
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