Abstract

The promotion of products of the firm in direct contacts with doctors is a task of a trade representative of the pharmaceutical firm. The medical representative fulfills a similar function as the trade representative does. He represents the pharmaceutical firm, however he represents the firm in a special way, because in direct contacts with doctors. His task is ,,recommending" the products of the given firm to the doctor. That ,,recommending" in practice does not come down generally to giving simple information on the effectiveness of the medicine, its side effects, advantages and defects in the comparison with different medicines etc., because the doctor draws such knowledge (or a least he should draw) from professional mage zines. The medical representative's task is also establishing possibly widest range of contacts with doctors and supporting these contacts. The medical representative is obliged to carry out orders given by the employer, what however does not absolve him of personal responsibility if these orders are in conflict with principles of ethics. In discussion on work of the medical representative one can distinguish two positions. First of them states that the medical representative should make do with giving possibly full information about the given product. According to the followers of the second position, the different ways of encouraging the doctors to prescribe specific products are also acceptable ethically, excluding only the ones which in the obvious way do harm to the health of the patients. So the ongoing discussion is on the following problem: does the medical representative have the right to inform not only about the existence of the given medicine (product), but also to go in for a certain kind of advertising policy, and in consequence to persuade the doctor to prescribe his patients the concrete medicine, and not the medicine produced by competition?

The medical representative is acting in the interests of his employer, so the samples of the medicines, the didactic materials and modern diagnostic software distributed by him, i.e. everything what is not the ,,significant bonus” in the understanding of ethical codes and pharmaceutical law, serve the promotion of definite products.

The limitation of the ways of promoting healing products can lead now to the situation where pharmaceutical firms, by mediation of their representatives, will try to strengthen the effectiveness of the acceptable methods of the advertisement and seek new methods e.g. by applying the various methods of the manipulation.

That is why it seems that formulating too detailed norms regulating medical representatives' activity is pointless. Devising new methods of exerting the pressure on doctors will always be possible, and the fact that some of the methods were not included in the detailed code of ethical norms can make an impression that it is ethically acceptable. It also means that neither ethical codes nor corporate culture reigning at pharmaceutical concerns are able to excuse the medical representative from the necessity of independent ethical self-assessment of undertaken activities by him