Article Text
PDF
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Dr McMahon, who directs the US Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), criticises1 our article on how continuing medical education (CME) was used to sell hypoactive sexual desire disorder,2 stating that we ‘provide no supporting evidence’ for our claims that CME courses are an important marketing tool. Perhaps he missed the references in our article, but additional studies support our points.3–9
Dr McMahon also claims that industry supported only 11% of CME activities.1 ,10 However, ACCME doesn't count two forms of industry funding as commercial support. In 2011, ACCME stopped requiring reporting of in-kind support, defined as ‘nonmonetary resources provided by a commercial interest in support of a CME activity’. Examples include ‘equipment, supplies, and facilities’.11 In other words, industry can pay for meeting space, hotel rooms, audiovisual costs, food and other costs related to a CME event—but as long as the money is paid directly to a hotel, caterer and the like, none of the money is reported as commercial support.
Also, advertising …
Footnotes
Competing interests AF-B is a paid expert witness at the request of plaintiffs in litigation regarding pharmaceutical marketing practices, and directs PharmedOut, a Georgetown University Medical Center project that encourages rational prescribing. AH is the paid project manager of PharmedOut. PharmedOut has a contract with theGeorge Washington Milken Institute School of Public Health to create industry-free continuing medical education modules and resources for the Washington DC Department of Health.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Linked Articles
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Commercial funding of accredited continuing medical education
- Author ’s reply to McMahon
- Accreditation rules safeguard continuing medical education from commercial influence
- What price education
- Proliferation of gynaecological scientific societies and their financial transparency: an Italian survey
- Multistakeholder perspectives on the strengthening and embedding of mandatory continuing medical education in Georgia: a qualitative study
- Point of care information services: a platform for self-directed continuing medical education for front line decision makers
- Industry spending on continuing medical education in US falls further
- Hypoactive sexual desire disorder: inventing a disease to sell low libido
- Industry support of physician education in the USA