Drug firms 'must end gifts culture'

The Royal College of Physicians led a wide-ranging inquiry into the relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry to be published in full this week.

It calls for an end to a "culture" of doctors receiving freebies from pharmaceutical companies, the BBC reported.

Currently, drug companies can offer small promotional gifts such as pens or surgical gloves and pay expenses for educational meetings.

But under General Medical Council guidelines doctors must not accept anything that could influence their judgment.

The report also suggests doctors feel more valued by drugs companies than the NHS.

It said: "It is partly because the NHS fails to value doctors, while the pharmaceutical industry is good at expressing this value, that practitioners turn to industry and become dependent on its gift culture.

"Acting on this single recommendation alone would do much to rebalance the relationship between medicine and industry to one based on equality and mutual respect, with improved patient outcomes as the overriding objective of that relationship."

However, Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association's ethics committee, said occasionally doctors' practices received equipment such as mobile blood pressure monitoring machines or nebulisers that could benefit patients, and it should be up to clinicians to decide whether to accept a gift.

He told the BBC: "Doctors are particularly well placed to make a judgment about whether a product has a benefit to patients or not."