Use of Psychological Manipulation of Physicians to Sell Pharmaceuticals: The Drug Representative as "Den Mother"

We have discussed, most recently here, how marketers of health care goods and services use deception and psychological manipulation to sell their goods.  Physicians, of course, are particular targets of marketers of drugs and devices. 

A vivid anecdote showing how this works just appeared on a New York Times blog.  It may be easier to recall that psychological theories:

In the social and culinary wasteland that was residency training, it had been easy for Cheryl, a bubbly brunette in her mid-30s, to become our den mother. She never tired of listening to our grousing, had unerring taste in take-out, made it a point to come to our parties when invited and every so often brought in a plate of her homemade brownies.

But Cheryl was no den mother. She was a pharmaceutical rep.

That she managed to slip a plug for her wares into every conversation or tuck copies of studies promoting her product into our white coat pockets as we polished off her brownies was awkward. But we always overlooked the salesmanship because it was such a familiar part of our residency routine. As trainees in a large teaching hospital, we knew numerous sales reps by name and the products they peddled; and it was odd, even disappointing, to go to an educational conference where one of them was not standing next to a table laden with tchotchkes, information brochures and free take-out.

 But in retrospect, such docile acceptance was problematic. In an environment where no one, including senior doctors, ever questioned the presence of sales reps, we didn’t think too hard about why they might have been as friendly and helpful as they were. We didn’t ask where the money for all these giveaways was coming from and we were rarely curious about who these reps actually were (I only ever knew their first names).

It wasn’t that I or the other residents preferentially prescribed their products. But I do know that more than once when faced with a decision about what to prescribe, the first thought that came to mind was not what I needed to do to find the latest evidence-based recommendation, but what Cheryl had just told us over lunch. 

All of this became painfully clear after Cheryl suddenly disappeared. At first, the other trainees and I thought she had been fired, so we avoided bringing her absence up with the rep who replaced her. But when I ran into someone from her company at a national medical conference a year later, I learned otherwise.

'Oh, she got promoted,' the rep said, smiling broadly. 'Now she’s an executive in the central office.' 

Since Ahari and Fugh-Berman wrote and testified about the cynical tactics used in the marketing of drugs and other medical products years ago (look here, here, and here), it is now inexcusably naive for doctors to believe that drug (or device) representatives are their friends, no matter how friendly they appear.  Drug and device reps are trained to appear to be likable.  They may look like sympathetic friends, glamorous companions, or in this case, den mothers.  But as Sah and Fugh-Berman noted (look here), likability is a ruse to sell products.  Brownies are supplied to give the appearance of warmth and comfort, and to generate feelings of reciprocity.

How well it works appears above: "the first thought that came to mind was not what I needed to do to find the latest evidence-based recommendation, but what Cheryl had told us over lunch."  That it works well is demonstrated by Cheryl's promotion to an executive office.

As long as physicians remain trusting, naive, or foolish in their approach to deceptive marketing, there will be more use of needlessly expensive, and sometimes needlessly toxic drugs, and more drug reps made into well-paid executives.