Profile: Rory O’Connor
Rory O ‘Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Rehabilitation Medicine at The University of Leeds. However, his teaching of medical students goes far beyond the ward - he is a key supporter of the student organisation ‘PharmAware’ and runs many teaching sessions with this group. Sophie North and Sunil Bhopal dropped into Rory’s office for a cup of tea and a chat to find out more about why he feels so passionately about PharmAware
Rory O’Connor decided at the age of eleven that he wanted to become a doctor ‘to help people’. Between 1989 and 1995 he attended medical school at University College Dublin.
During this time Rory began his interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. Following others into drug lunches, and accepting what he terms ‘trinkets’ was the norm. Becoming a junior doctor, the gifts became bigger and the restaurants fancier. However, when researching at UCL, questions started to form in his mind. An article about the UK ‘No Free Lunch’ campaign by Des Spence helped to answer these and gave a “real boost” to his growing belief that these interactions with “Big Pharma” were morally wrong.
Rory moved to Leeds in 2004 to take up a consultant post. He decided to draw a line, and stop any marketing interactions with Big Pharma. He describes three key reasons behind this decision. “I wanted to independently evaluate the best treatment for my patients without relying on biased market propaganda and sales representatives’ glossy sales pamphlets.” There is much evidence to suggest that the ‘reciprocal effect’ (where a sense of indebtedness is sub-consciously sparked through accepting free gifts) occurs and leads doctors to prescribe less rationally and cost-effectively. “Through accepting hospitality we inadvertently increase the price of medications for the NHS, as the more drug companies spend on marketing, the more they will then charge for the drug.” Furthermore, Rory questions why “doctors, generally earning hundred of pounds a week, really need a free lunch; surely they can afford their own!”
In 2005 Rory’s life changed again. He was approached by “a bunch of frightfully keen students“. Suddenly there was a group of young activists to collaborate with in his struggle to make others see the marketing influence of the pharmaceutical industry. As it turned out, this group was becoming something more formal and was to go on to form the students group Pharmaware part of the Medsin network.
As a student-doctor partnership, PharmAware quickly gained pace at Leeds medical school. Rory provided what he likes to term “a mature perspective” along with plenty of good influence amongst the medical school staff members. In the meantime the student pharmAware members got down to much of the organising, rallying and photocopying.
Rory thinks it’s important to teach medical students about the ethical issues that they’ll face before they reach the wards, and so as part of that he and various Pharmaware members came up with a Student Selected Component (SSC) for 2nd and 3rd years. During this two-week course, students are introduced to “BigPharma; the good, the bad and the ugly”. The SSC shows many takes on Big Pharma’s activities with talks coming from doctors, pharmacists and the industry.
The SSC has been a great success over the last two years with comments from students like “it has opened my eyes to an area I knew very little about” and “I never know that they had so much influence on prescribing decisions”. Rory himself describes how “it is such a great way of get students to think about the cheap tat that they’re soon to be bombarded with” while his voice drips with disdain about the Elvis CDs and supermarket trolley tokens he found being given out on his last ‘fact-finding’ mission.
As the teacups run dry we think about leaving, then ask Rory what the future holds in this area - he gives off a telling smile. “Hmmm, well, it’s all about protecting patients” he says. “It’s not going to be an easy journey, Big Pharma is powerful and we’re just a very small part of a very complicated picture.”But as with everything, change has to start somewhere. A few student groups here, a couple of doctors there. Now we hear that medical schools in the USA have banned reps from hospitals. Is that possible here, we ask? “Anything’s possible” says Rory, and with that he’s off to carry on with the PharmAware struggle…
Sophie North
Fourth year Medical Student
University of Leeds
UK
sophienorth@fastmail.fm
Sunil Bhopal
Medical student
University of Leeds
UK
ssbhopal@googlemail.com