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General practitioners and sales representatives: Why are we so ambivalent?

PloS one, 2022-01, Vol.17 (1), p.e0261661-e0261661 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

COPYRIGHT 2022 Public Library of Science ;2022 Barbaroux et al 2022 Barbaroux et al ;ISSN: 1932-6203 ;EISSN: 1932-6203 ;DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261661 ;PMID: 35073342

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  • Title:
    General practitioners and sales representatives: Why are we so ambivalent?
  • Author: Barbaroux, Adriaan ; Pourrat, Isabelle ; Bouchez, Tiphanie
  • Mintzes, Barbara
  • Subjects: Adult ; Ambivalence ; Behavior ; Beliefs, opinions and attitudes ; Biology and Life Sciences ; Continuing education ; Drug Industry ; Drug Prescriptions - statistics & numerical data ; Family medicine ; Female ; France ; General Practitioners - psychology ; Gift Giving ; Humans ; Interviews as Topic ; Male ; Marketing ; Medicine and Health Sciences ; Middle Aged ; People and Places ; Physicians (General practice) ; Prescription writing ; Psychological aspects ; Psychological research ; Qualitative Research ; Research and Analysis Methods ; Sales personnel ; Social aspects ; Social Sciences ; Training
  • Is Part Of: PloS one, 2022-01, Vol.17 (1), p.e0261661-e0261661
  • Description: Accepting gifts from pharmaceutical sales representatives (sales reps) or meeting them is correlated with excessive, more expensive and sometimes less rational prescribing. French general practitioners (GPs) tend to hold an unfavorable opinion of the pharmaceutical industry, yet the behavior they adopt with sales reps is generally favorable. Until now, no study has sought to explain the reasons for this discrepancy. This study explores GP experiences to better understand their ambivalent behavior. This qualitative descriptive study was based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews with French GPs in the south-east of France. An interpretative phenomenological approach was chosen to explore individual professional practices and to model the phenomenon through in-depth analysis of semi-structured interviews. A general inductive analysis was carried out. Data were analyzed by researchers from different disciplines (psychology, sociology and general practice). Ten GPs were interviewed for an average of 50 minutes. The analysis revealed three forces that combine to motivate GPs to keep meeting sales reps despite their unfavorable opinion of these visits: practical reasons such as the need for a substitute for continuing education; social and cultural reasons such as courtesy towards representatives; and psychological mechanisms such as cognitive dissonance and a hidden curriculum. The GP-representative relationship is complex and involves psychological mechanisms that the medical profession often fails to recognize. GPs use reps as a convenient tool for continuing education, particularly in the setting of a private practice where GPs feel pressed for time. Cognitive dissonance is a well-supported theory in social psychology that explains how a person maintains a behavior while having an unfavorable opinion of it. Since GP meetings with sales reps start during their internship, they could also be considered as part of a hidden curriculum. The strength of this work is to combine medical, social psychological and sociological perspectives with the original interpretative phenomenological approach. When the veil is lifted on individual ambivalence, the questions raised are more social and political than individual.
  • Publisher: United States: Public Library of Science
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 1932-6203
    EISSN: 1932-6203
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261661
    PMID: 35073342
  • Source: Geneva Foundation Free Medical Journals at publisher websites
    MEDLINE
    PubMed Central
    Public Library of Science
    ProQuest Central
    DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
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