BMJ  2008;336:352 (16 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39486.709167.DB

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Industry’s push to woo nurse prescribers has been at "expense of nursing integrity"

Michael Day

1 Milan

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Nursing journals are aiding and abetting the drug industry’s attempts to influence nurses’ prescribing, it has been claimed this week.

A report in PloS Medicine (2008;5:e5 doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050005) notes that nurses now have greater power to choose products and services and to influence choices made by doctors and other clinical colleagues. As a result, say the New Zealand authors, Annemarie Jutel of Otago Polytechnic and David Menkes of the University of Auckland, nurses are now a "desirable target" for the industry.

However, they say, although medical journals have often criticised drug companies for exploiting patients and doctors through techniques such as direct to consumer advertising, ghost writing, gifts, and free meals, the nursing literature "has yet to pay much attention" to the issue.

To study the industry’s relationship with the nursing press the authors searched nursing journals in two leading clinical news databases, MedLine and Cinahl, in May 2007. . . . [Full text of this article]


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