Researchers surveyed a national sample of medical students and residents in 2011 about their dealings with drug companies. In 2024, they went back to the same people, now practicing physicians, and asked again. Free drug samples had nearly doubled, conversations with pharmaceutical representatives had risen by half, and a quarter of respondents could not say whether their own institution had a policy governing industry contact. The findings appear in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, published online on August 9, and were reported by STAT this month.
What the study measured matters as much as what it found. Researchers asked physicians what they received and where they get drug information. They did not examine anyone's prescriptions. So the honest reading is that industry contact remains routine and has shifted in shape, not that any individual doctor's judgment was bought.
