Ethics and Medical Representatives- part 2

Short-term gains can have adverse long-term effects. When medical representatives violate their own principles, they lose self-respect and confidence in their abilities. They may begin to think that the only way they can make sales is to be dishonest or unethical. Short-term compromises also make long-term customer relationships more difficult to form. Customers/ doctors will be reluctant to deal with the salespeople again.

Unethical selling practices will affect the organization badly in the long run. It will adversely affect the reputation of the drug company. In order to prevent this, medical representatives should form a personal code of ethics and work according to it.

They should understand that unethical ways will not do anything to the final consumers, i.e. patients.

Your firm can strongly affect the ethical choices you will have to make. When you view your firm’s polices or requests as improper, you have three choices:

1. Ignore your personal values and do what your company asks you to do. Self-respect suffers when you have to compromise principles to please an employer. If you take this path, you will probably feel guilty and be dissatisfied with your job in the long run.

 2. Take a stand and tell your employer what you think. Try to influence the decisions and policies of your company and supervisors.

 3. Refuse to compromise your principles. Taking this path may mean you will get fired or be forced to quit.

You should not take a job with a pharmaceutical company whose products, policies, and conduct conflict with your standards. Before taking a sales job, investigate the company’s procedures and selling approach to see whether they conflict with your personal ethical standards.

Ethics is meant to be a broad term to the medical representatives. It is not only cover the customers but also the company, competitors of the company, other sales persons with in the company etc. Personal code of ethics should made of considering all these areas. Among these the conduct with the customer itself is the most important thing. In my next blogs I will be discussing on these aspects..