Jackie is a doctor at a private family practice in Waco, Texas. He and his wife have been invited to dinner at a nice, expensive restaurant by an old college friend that has recently been employed as a pharmaceutical representative for Fannie Mae Pharmaceuticals. Jim is a new pharmaceutical representative eager to make a good impression on his company. Jim represents the premium diabetes drug, Glucophage, and he wants to discuss with Jackie the benefits of prescribing this expensive diabetic drug to his patients at his practice. Jackie’s practice services clients that are 65% over the age of 55 and the majority are insured patients (Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2014).
Jackie faces the ethical dilemma of making a decision …show more content…
The sales representatives are driven to establish relationships in the medical industry and influence doctors’ decisions on what they prescribe to their patients. The Pew Charitable Trust reported in 2012 (as cited in the Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2014), out of the pharmaceutical industry “spent $27 billion” and $24 billion of that was spent on “marketing to physicians” (Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2014; Pew Charitable Trust, 2012). The case study put together by Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper (2014) for the Twenty First Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, indicates that doctors accept gifts such as “food, entertainment, or travel from the pharmaceutical industry” (Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2014). These gifts “trigger emotions... and maximize the impact” of the sales call on the doctors (Wong, 2018). A Deloitte survey in the Economist (2013), (as cited in the Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2014) reports “35% of doctors surveyed accept food, entertainment, or travel from the pharmaceutical industry, and 16% accept consulting or speaking fees” (Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper, 2016; Economist, …show more content…
Bernard Lonergan (1957) was a 20th century philosopher that believed that “all humans follow the same basic pattern of cognitive operations in order to make sense of the world” (Johnson, 2016, p. 98). Jackie will act as a “natural scientists” by first observing on the “physical or empirical levels” (Johnson, 2016, p. 92). Ethics expert Catharyn Baird (2005) uses Lonergan’s method as a framework for making ethical choices, developing a set of questions and guidelines for each of his four levels (Johnson, 92, 2016). Jackie must “process the information on an intellectual level by asking questions” and make a choice as his patients’ doctor on which is the best drug brand to prescribe. His “moral objectivism” makes him aware of how his actions will impact others (Preston-Cunningham, ppt1, 2018). He examines the medical guidelines and ask questions about the drug company’s evidence for their claim that Glucophage is better for the patient’s kidneys and how does is it aid in weight control (Connolly, Althaus, & Skipper,