Wellness and prevention are the healthcare system’s responsibilities to seek products and services that can minimize preventable persistent diseases, and sustain good health and well-being. This is the main aim of the health care systems in wellness and prevention marketing strategies. Even though the health care organizations are trying to attain their set objectives, they lack strategic layouts, which lead them to miss potential opportunities. In that respect, the marketing team should be well equipped with marketing skills, which are necessary for the motivation and encouragement of people to engage in prevention and wellness activities (Healey & Marchese, 2006). As much as the marketing of wellness and prevention is a very crucial activity in the health care systems, it should be kept in mind that drug prescription, advertisement, and promotion should remain trustworthy, balanced, and accurately communicate the idea by the marketing ethics. This can be achieved if the pharmaceutical companies and their representatives stop swaying doctors towards their products. This paper provides an assessment of an existing wellness and prevention marketing program and proposes improvements (Morgan, 2008).
Ethical Assessment
The work of physicians is to lessen distress from clients. These doctors can achieve that by investigating the client and prescribing required drugs to recover his or her wellbeing. If the health of the client is at risk, the doctor should make knowledgeable decisions about the drugs they propose. However, in most cases, doctors depend so much on meeting with pharmaceutical delegates to select drugs from competing sellers. These doctors may not have enough information about the health risks of such drugs. Sometimes, these sales delegates may be trained to deceive doctors or mislead them on making unknowledgeable decisions (Morgan, 2008). Most sales representatives focus on the economic baselines of their respective companies rather than being knowledgeable and moral (Levy, 2007). As such, pharmaceutical representatives relate to the doctors solely on business terms and not marketing of wellness of the patients. In addition to that, pharmaceutical companies teach their representatives to perceive their meetings with the competitors and physicians as competitive and risky environments. Therefore, they are motivated to win the physicians and sell to them as much as they can. Some representatives may be trained to look at the doctors’ questions as challenging obstacles to defeat; therefore, they do not help the physicians have the correct information on their drugs (Van Zee, 2009).
Sale representatives avoid explanations and descriptions of some drugs, which they know would reduce their selling chances. Instead, they use the doctor’s questions to clarify these drugs. In addition, some sales agents use verbal and non-verbal techniques to force physicians to prescribe their drugs. These sale delegates may be taught to create an unjustified sense of necessity to prescribe drugs. They may be coached to use bending or mirroring techniques, which are equivalent to the physician’s posture, tone, head movements, and gestures. These nonverbal communications would increase the physician’s confidence in their drugs. The sales representatives may, at times, manipulate their discussions with physicians for the advantage of their respective companies, but not for the welfare of the client (Levy, 2007).
Proposed Improvements
Since the lives of patients are in danger, meetings between pharmaceutical delegates and physicians must be directed by rules of honesty and ethics at their places of work. In that sense, pharmaceutical representatives need to be coached to maintain the desires of physicians to come up with knowledgeable decisions (Healey & Marchese, 2006). On top of that, pharmaceutical representatives should handle doctors as medical professionals, reply to their queries competitively regarding real risks and paybacks, and guarantee open discussions with doctors that widen reliably (Van Zee, 2009).
(DDMA) and (FDA) are the bodies concerned with the regulations of drugs. Regarding drug advertisement ethics, the drugs must pass through the TARES test before being prescribed. This means that ads should be 100 % truthful to avoid any negative outcomes for the advertiser and the user. Next, the ads should be authentic on the side of the advertiser. This means that the advertiser should have the confidence to defend the ads in case any unethical claim arises. Another point is that ads should value the user. This implies that ads should encourage coherent thoughts, rather than attacking definite feelings when trying to persuade consumers. Also, the ads should not deceive the consumer, and they should be socially reliable. Moreover, FDA and DDMA need to pre-prove the campaign ads for scrutiny before the drugs are marketed to the users. Lastly, ads should have listed all side effects of the drugs, but not a summary alone. The possibility of such side effects episodes should be involved to help in the TARES test (Morgan, 2008).
Conclusion
The health care system is facing challenges in the process of wellness and prevention marketing. These challenges are caused by a lack of medical ethics in the pharmaceutical industry and physicians. Medical representatives may entice or trick physicians to have their drugs prescribed irrespective of their repercussions to the consumers. Therefore, the patients are prescribed irrelevant drugs in favor of drug sellers. Because health care systems are very important facilities for wellness and prevention, DDMA and FDA should put severe regulations, and follow them strictly to ensure that drug prescription, advertisement, and promotion meet the requirements of the patient.
References
Healey, B., & Marchese, M. (2006).The use of marketing tools to increase participation in worksite wellness programs. Academy of Health Care Management, 2(2), 75-84.
Levy, J. (2007). Demographic changes in Europe: Opportunity or threat? Journal of Medical Marketing,7(4), 287-293.
Morgan, M. (2008). Interactions of doctors with the pharmaceutical industry. Journal of Medical Ethics 32(10), 559-563.
Van Zee, A. (2009). The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy. American Journal of Public Health. 99(2), 221-227.