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The best reason, in my opinion, is that there are new drugs all the time. The FDA approves on the order of 20 or so drugs per year (that's new drugs, not includ
by jonlucc 11y ago
The best reason, in my opinion, is that there are new drugs all the time. The FDA approves on the order of 20 or so drugs per year (that's new drugs, not including new generic versions of old drugs). So physicians have to learn 2 new drugs per month in enough depth to consider how it should change their current prescribing habits.
- wpietri 11y agoEven if consumers were informed by some mysterious agency, doctors would still have to learn new things all the time, including which new drugs are appropriate to prescribe for which conditions. Since doctors have to learn that stuff anyhow, and since they already talk to patients, I don't think explaining drugs to patients is a particularly big burden.
- aquadrop 11y agoAnd now, when advertising is allowed, doctors don't have to learn those new drugs?
- brandonmenc 11y agoWhen there's a brand new drug for your semi-rare condition, your family doctor might not yet know such a drug even exists were it not for you seeing the ad and asking about it.
- ejstronge 11y agoFamily doctors are not likely to be treating a semi-rare condition. To put it in programming terms, a front-end web developer would seek advice from a networking expert if her or his application was experiencing a lot of networking difficulties.
- CreRecombinase 11y agoThat's not a good way to understand the problem. For any particular medical field, that number of new drugs is going to be much lower.
- ejstronge 11y agoFor most fields of medicine, new drugs (and not reiterations of previously-approved drugs) are rare. Further, a new drug will have generated extensive hype before its approval, given the requirement for Phase I, II and III trials for most approvals. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to state that physicians are more than able to track all drugs relevant to their core patient populations.
- sanderjd 11y agoThere are precious few professions that don't require constant skill-sharpening, and if anything, I would expect doctors to be amongst the best at keeping up to date. They spend more time than any of us being formally educated, so the informal self-education necessary to do the work seems like it should be natural. But I don't know anything about this stuff, and I'd love for someone who does to teach me a thing or two.