Posted by RN320 on January 12, 2007, at 14:32:15
In reply to Re: samples, posted by notfred on January 8, 2007, at 18:04:30
Here's the deal as I understand it with samples. The FDA now requires all pharmaceutical companies to account for where each and every sample goes. This is for safety reasons as well as monitoring for abuse of samples by physician offices and the pharma reps themselves! they used to be able to give out a truckload of samples and never know where they went. Then, in the late 80's (I think), the FDA came down on the industry. So, in some physician offices the staff take care of logging who gets what when (drug, dose, quantity, lot# and exp. date). MD's have to personally sign for samples (they can be pretty lax about that one when there's an office manager or nurse around who will sign, but that's how it's supposed to go). The one case where the doc has to sign for any samples is for the controlled substances. A patient signature confirming receipt of a scheduled drug is supposed to be required, but it seems like sometimes they overlook the schedule IV class. My pdocs office is very careful about samples- you have to sign for each and every one. It's a mandate from the FDA, so I don't believe that it can be overridden by state laws.
/m
poster:RN320
thread:719688
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070107/msgs/721699.html