Pharma goodies...okay, maybe not the French chocolate cookies

I’m going to miss the days when big pharma showered gifts embroidered with their logos to doctors. Ever since the voluntary ban on branded gifts, pharma has ceased to supply our department with pens. The resident area still has several left, but our stash is rapidly depleting. Given my hospital’s  hybrid documentation system, my pens actually run out of ink every 2 weeks, assuming I don’t lose it or contaminate it in a C. diff patient room.

Sure, I understand the ethical problems of product placement, especially if pharma is giving us mugs, napkins, mp3 music players, bags, flash drives, and whatever-else-you-least-think-is-excessive…but pens? Who cares if I have my pen advertises a monoclonal antibody? In fact, some branded pens are decent writing implements–they don’t clump out dried ink like those crappy bank pens. I remember that when I was in medical school, Bob Goodman would organize  No Free Lunch rallies to collect pharmaceutical pens in exchange for unlabeled plastic pens that were only half full of ink. I assume that it was for a good cause, but why would I give up my stainless steel Pfizer pen with German-made tungsten carbide tip refills for a clearly inferior product? I don’t doubt that product placement influences product opinion, but it doesn’t influence drug choice. In the hospital setting, whatever on medicare/medicaid formulary dictates what I prescribe anyway. In fact, my pens have saved me from embarassment when patients ask me about drugs that they’ve seen on TV. I’d glance at my pen and see what the generic name equivalent is. The CFO or committee that got a pharma kickback for approving the drug in the first place should be punished, not a lowly worker like me. It is such a tragedy…

The only consolation at this point are the goodies I already have. My ipod shuffle knock-off is pretty cool, but my favorite goodie is probably the green ceramic mug with an attached nose from Flonase. The nose is horridly unsightly and only adds bulk to a perfectly good mug. It is the perfect example of excess. I’ll post up a picture when I find it in my boxes. What is your favorite pharma gift? Send in pictures, and I will post it up!

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