Is the relationship between pharma and medical education on the rocks?

Although the educational flagships of many medical specialties proudly fly the colours of their drug company sponsors, psychiatry has long been suspected as being most entangled with industry; a suspicion that is confirmed by the world’s nascent disclosure regimes. In Australia, where the courts have forced the industry to disclose the details of every sponsored event, psychiatrists are “educated” with industry’s hospitality more often than any other subspecialty. Two years ago Malcolm Battersby, an associate professor of psychiatry at Flinders University in Adelaide, became convenor of a small organising committee that was charged with planning the 2009 congress of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. His organising committee’s key reform proposal was a modest one: they wanted to remove the rights to the naming of the congress from drug companies, replacing the lost income with sponsorship from public or not for profit sources. What evidence there is suggests that drug companies use accredited continuing medical education as part of marketing campaigns. Sponsors’ drugs can receive favourable treatment, and irrational prescribing may result. A small group of hospital based psychiatrists in Adelaide have decided to institute their own ban on sponsorship, effective immediately. When Battersby was meeting with his dozen or so psychiatrist colleagues at the Flinders Medical Centre recently, the subject of sponsorship came up. A drug company had offered to send a visiting “key opinion leader” to the hospital to deliver an “educational” presentation about a drug. Without Battersby saying much, a discussion about sponsored education ensued, and the group ultimately decided to end all drug company sponsorship of psychiatric educational activities at their hospital.The frequency of the psychiatrists’ free lunches might decline, but the hope is there may be a commensurate reduction in the risk of irrational or inappropriate prescribing