UCSF Alumni Author Series: A Conversation with Quinn Grundy, PhD ’15, RN

UCSF Alumni Author Series:
A Conversation with Quinn Grundy, PhD ’15, RN

(Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nursing, Health Policy Alumni)

Friday, March 19, 2021
5-6 p.m. Pacific time
Online
(Viewing link and instructions will be shared in the event reminder.)

UCSF Alumni Relations and UCSF Archives are thrilled to bring you this bimonthly virtual event series in which distinguished UCSF alumni authors discuss their recently published books!

We hear stories of pharmaceutical and medical-device companies wining and dining physicians. But what about nurses? Nurses interact with industry representatives on a day-to-day basis, but these relationships often fly under the radar, allowing the industry to exert invisible influence from the bedside to the boardroom.

Join us online as Leslie Dubbin, PhD ’14, leads a lively discussion with Quinn Grundy, PhD ’15, RN, who will talk about her book Infiltrating Healthcare: How Marketing Works Underground to Influence Nurses and discuss the ethical and practical issues that arise from the relationships between nurses and industry representatives in day-to-day practice.

About the featured author:
Dr. Quinn Grundy is an assistant professor with the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. Her research explores the commercial determinants of health and their impact on the delivery of health services, health evidence, and consumer health information.

This program is brought to you by the UCSF Office of Alumni Relations and UCSF Archives.

Register here

 

Infiltrating Healthcare

How Marketing Works Underground to Influence Nurses
 

Quinn Grundy

How sales representatives from Big Pharma and other healthcare companies circumvent public and regulatory scrutiny by forging relationships with nurses.

Awarded second place in the 2019 AJN Book of the Year Award in the Professional Issues Category by the American Journal of Nursing

It was once common for pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers to treat doctors to lavish vacations or give them new cars; companies would do virtually anything to buy influence so that their medications or devices would be used in a doctor’s office or hospital. But with growing public scrutiny of kickbacks to doctors, the huge giveaways have disappeared. In Infiltrating Healthcare, Quinn Grundy shows that sales representatives are working instead behind the scenes. It is to nurses that these companies now market.

Nurses, Grundy argues, are the perfect target for sales reps: their work is largely invisible and frequently undervalued, yet they wield a great deal of influence over treatment and purchasing decisions. Furthermore, there are no legal restrictions on marketing to most nurses. Grundy describes how, under the guise of education or product support, and through gifts and free samples, sales representatives influence nurses in the course of day-to-day clinical practice.

Grundy argues that the very presence of sales reps in operating rooms, purchasing committee meetings, and patient care units blurs the boundaries between patient care and medical sales. Helpfully, she also describes ways that nurses can be aware of (and resistant to) their influence. Infiltrating Healthcare is a call to action to protect the clinical spaces where we are at our most vulnerable—and the decisions that take place there—from the pursuit of profit at any cost. This is a timely book that shines a light on a practice that often goes unseen, and which has tangible implications for healthcare policy and practice.