Drug company sponsored meetings

tallaght01

So, in my new job i'm expected to see a lot of kids with behavioural problems...ADHD, autism etc.

Now, in my previous hospitals, these were all seen by the child pych services.

However, here they come under the care of general paediatricians, and only the most severe get referred to psychiatrists.

So, i find myself in a situation where I am expected to both diagnose and manage psychiatric illness/learning difficulty.

It's all a bit outside of my comfort zone, but I plod on, and have managed OK in the 2 clinics where I've so far had to deal with these types of patients.

Now, there's a "dinner and educations ession" on locally next week. We get a slap up meal, and it's followed by a 2 hour tutorial on childhood mental illness. The focus is particularly on ADHD and autism, the 2 most common types of learning difficulty I'm encountering in clinics. The guy giving the talk is a renowned expert. Great.

The problem is that I don't normally have anything to do with events/talks/lunches etc that are sponsored by drug companies. It's my small way of registering my disapproval of the pharmaceutical's shameless marketing of their products. As it happens, this particular session is being sponsored by a lage company who manufacture medication used in the treatment of ADHD. they have already posted me an invite, and numerous leaflets about their new drug.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone attends meeting that are sponsored by drug companies. Is the info usually reliable? Or do the speakers usually have a bias? I would imagine this particular speaker pretty straight down the middle, but who knows.

I'm considering attending the tutorial, although i would refuse to attend the dinner. But I don't want to be fed a load of rubbish about prescribing a particular company's drugs?

So, any experiences out there? Is it "safe" to attend?

sam34

i feel your pain tallaght! usuallly i find teh reliable speakers will be straight up front and say something like " thanks to company ABC for inviting me to speak blah blah but im not going to be promoting their drug etc" . the ones that dont say something along thoise lines will be the ones with the "fantastic" slides showing how great the drug is...

its good to hear the good names speak, esp if they stick to their own (unsponsored) research, but you need a high degree of scepticism...