Assessing the effect of educational intervention on pharmaceutical promotion: a follow-up study among medical students from Pakistan

Abstract

Background

The promotional strategies implemented by pharmaceutical organizations lead to abnormal prescribing practices that both diminish physician-patient confidence and drive-up healthcare expenses. The motives of the pharmaceutical companies are to appeal students’ natural preferences. So, educating them represents an essential approach to combat these effects. Research provides few examples of educational programs while their long term sustained benefit has not been established over time. This research investigated how educational programs affect students in the short- and long-term after exposure to pharmaceutical promotional activities.

Methods

The study was conducted longitudinally across 7 schools within three provinces of Pakistan. Survey data collection took place from 856 medical students of the 3rd year class of term 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 for pre-post educational assessment. We performed two-year follow-up surveys which asked the same questions to these 2 cohorts to determine both the clinical rotations’ impact and various promotional methods on their responses. We measured the opinions of 819 students who completed their last year and did not take part in the educational intervention to compare with those taking it. Analysis of each individual point in all comparison sets occurred through SPSS version 23.0.

Results

Student perception along with business approach towards promotional strategies underwent significant modifications throughout the short-term period. The educational method lost its effectiveness at convincing students about avoiding financial support from pharmaceutical companies in the long-term period (median 2(1) to 2(0) p:0.049). Educated students displayed superior knowledge about how trivial gifts affect medication decisions over uneducated final year students (2 (0) to 3 (0) p < 0.001). In the group with high promotion exposure the educated students-maintained awareness about trivial gift influences (p < 0.001) but uneducated students believed they were unaffected by such promotions (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

An education program could serve as a platform to build pharmaceutical promotion awareness alongside promoting skepticism levels and developing positive perceptions about pharmaceutical promotion methods. The educational intervention faces a high risk of becoming ineffective when students interact with the informal and hidden curriculum and exposure to promotional activities. The impact of role models, organizational culture, and institutional policies could be important aspects to be addressed for sustaining the effectiveness of such education programs.