Introduction:

Medical students are frequently exposed to pharmaceutical marketing. This interaction compromises the personal and professional integrity of the future doctors.

Objective:

To determine the attitude towards pharmaceutical marketing assumed by the medical students at the National University of San Marcos.

Methods:

An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted to medical students studying pre-clinical and clinical subjects. Sierles questionnaire and others were applied consisting in 37 items. Frequencies and percentages for categorical variables were estimated. As a measure of association, it was used crude and adjusted "prevalence ratio" through Poisson regression, and the dependent variable was the development of a pro-marketing attitude. Excel 2013 and Stata 12 were used for the analysis of the results.

Results:

There were recorded 407 surveys. The average age was 23 ± 3 years, and males were predominant. The 66.8% of students have a pro-marketing attitude. Among the associated factors were found: having received a gift (RP: 3.57 [CI: 95%, 1.93 - 6.6]) or magazine (RP: 0.7 [CI: 95%, 0.65 - 0.77]); having taken a previous course on health sciences (RP: 1.38 [CI: 95%, 1.20 - 1.6]); and being enrolled in courses at clinics (RP: 1.6 [CI: 95% CI 1.24-2.06]). Among the students of clinics doing practices in social security hospitals also happens to be an associated factor (RP: 1.16 [CI 95%, 1.02-1.33]).

Conclusions:

There is evidence that medical students are going to develop a pro-marketing attitude associated with the exposure in their academic years to marketing strategies of the pharmaceutical industries, with emphasis on those who have done their practices in Peruvian Social Health Insurance´s institutions.

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