Educating Health Professionals about Drug and Device Promotion: Authors' Reply

摘要

We thank Prof. Ravi Shankar for his thoughtful reflections [1] on our recommendations for education about drug and device promotion [2]. Prof. Shankar is one of the few who have published an evaluation of education about drug promotion [3], so we are pleased that he concurs with most of our recommendations. We agree with him that implementation of our recommendations will be difficult. The main barrier to implementation is the widespread denial by health professionals that we are often adversely influenced by promotion. This denial arises partly from ignorance of the evidence about promotion and partly from a refusal to accept that evidence, because it is viewed as insulting our self-esteem [4]. We believe health professionals need to move from overconfident illusions of invulnerability to accept that we are human, so it is normal for us to be misled by persuasive promotional techniques [5].