Commentary: The importance of bias in education
I received the following comment recently from one of our meeting faculty members, whose name is withheld for fear of being a “target.”
“During my training, we were basically told to avoid interacting with pharma reps, and our interaction with them was highly restricted or, in many cases, forbidden.
“It is only now in my role at the state and doing my Centers for Disease Control and Prevention work that I am realizing how much we need industry to move science and public health forward, and industry needs us for dissemination/implementation and the shaping of the research agenda. I think of how we are down to one class of antibiotics to treat gonorrhea, and we are not going to get a lot of new therapies without industry (certainly not from academia or public health).
“I just returned from the big (company name withheld) meeting and decided to take a different tactic – instead of avoiding (company name withheld) physician advisers, I decided to sit down and actually have a conversation with some of them – and I learned a ton. Different type of inside perspective that one cannot gain from just sitting in sessions.”
Those of us interested in education need to keep an eye on the prize – educating providers so that health care is optimized. This is best done by broadening the dialogue about how to improve and better disseminate both the quality and quantity of health care information being generated. Besides, the industry that has given us medications and vaccines that have improved the quality of life for so many needs to be treated with less contempt and more respect. It is time to build bridges, not walls, and broaden the collaboration needed to better disseminate the vast amount of new information being generated. Improving practitioner education will need fresh ideas, an open mind, validating studies, a gentler dialogue, and the respect, inclusion, and collaboration of all stakeholders.
Dr. Pellman is clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Pellman disclosed he is on the speakers bureau for Medimmune vaccine division. To comment, e-mail him at pdnews@frontlinemedcom.com.
