ABSTRACT
Medical professionals enjoy considerable professional autonomy, in return for which they are expected to prioritize responsibilities to their patients. In reality, however, medical professionals are increasingly reliant on health-related industries, and these relationships have the potential to create conflicts of interest (COI). In order to explore how medical professionals navigate this tension, we analyzed a recent published debate surrounding COI and a set of interviews with health professionals who work within the pharmaceutical industry. We found a variety of levels of regulation being invoked, including government, industry, organizational, professional, and individual. While practicing medical professionals tend to pitch individual-level regulation against profession-level regulation, industry employees show more nuanced attitudes towards both conflict of interest and regulation. These attitudes provide an alternative model from which medical professionals could–somewhat paradoxically–learn.
