GP Stories - Free lunch
On Disney+, there is currently a great dramatisation of the opiate epidemic that started in America called Dopesick. It explains the unscrupulous methods that this pharmaceutical company used to market their drug Oxycontin to physicians: nice meals out, filling up their fuel tanks, trips to Florida to listen to pain lectures. It shows the devastation that uncontrolled opiate prescribing can do to patients and seemingly to those around them. In this country, we do get drug reps around here but they don't seem to have as much power to do that sort of thing here. When in hospital, I remember the makers of Vesicare took the urology team out for a curry one evening, and our consultant gave us a talk on the drug. It clearly had an effect, as I remember it clearly and it is front of mind for overactive bladder. In primary care, its more limited to 'educational lunches', the big companies bring M&S and waitrose food, smaller companies bring in tesco meal deals - definitely not