ABSTRACT

Background: Gifts are in practice by pharmaceutical industries since almost a century for promotion of their products to develop brand recognition.

Aim: To describe the attitude of dentists working in tertiary care hospitals towards gifts from pharmaceutical industry.

Study design: Descriptive, cross-sectional.

Methodology: The current project was conducted at conveniently selected teaching and training institutions, clinics and departments from tertiary care hospitals in Lahore from 15-10-2018 to 15-03-2018. After having the approval of the ethical review committee for medical and biomedical research of the institution, (n=230) conveniently selected dentists fulfilling the inclusion criteria were enrolled. Information was collected on special questionnaires. Attitude of dentists was assessed towards marketing activities of pharmaceutical industries. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Mean with standard deviation was calculated for age. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for qualitative variables. A p-value less than 0.05 considered statistically significant.

Results: In our study, mean age of total sample was 30.66±8.551 years. Majority of participants, 155(67.39%) were unaware of the guidelines regarding the acceptability of gifts from pharmaceutical industries. The p values calculated from lunch and dinner and educational trip (large gifts) are 0.04 and 0.05 respectively.

Conclusion: Present study concluded that there is less knowledge of guidelines about acceptability of gifts. There is need to develop normative guidelines for dentists.

Keywords: Gift, Behavior, Pharmaceutical industry and Doctors.