Managing and regulating conflicts of interest in medicine

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.