Is Pharma a dirty word? Do nurses who “defect” and go off to work for pharmaceutical companies sell out their souls and become defiled?

Or is working in the pharm industry simply another option for nurses, and should I add, one that pays well and doesn’t include wiping up puke in the job description?

The reason I bring this up is that I came across a posting by a nurse who seemed absolutely horrified that her coworker would leave the marvelous land of hospital nursing and go off to work at a pharm company. The nerve. And to think that her pay check would double, she would be off on weekends and holidays, and the company actually offered her a pension plan.

Granted, pharmaceutical companies do not have the best reputation, but some of it is media hype. And certainly, some of the problems within the pharm industry are reflections of the healthcare system as a whole.

But this posting reminded me of an essay I had read a number of years in a nursing magazine, one of those first person pieces penned by a nurse who had defected from the hospital but was now “seeing the light.” This particular nurse had worked in ICU, gotten fed up with the usual abuse, poor working hours, low pay, etc., and had left hospital nursing. Now working as a pharm rep, with a job that gave her a huge boost in pay, a company car, an opportunity for travel, and more regular hours, this nurse suddenly felt “dirty.” Like the job was stealing her soul and tainting her with pleasures of the flesh.

So what does the good nurse do? She returned to the hospital, and now felt that she had been “cleansed.” In fact, she now said that she felt “clean.” And here she was, back on night shift, running up and down hallways and would no doubt soon be complaining about her aching back and varicose veins, but at least she was clean.

The essay, as you might be able to tell, left me feeling ill. I think we can look at this from 2 different angles. The first goes back to the ancient concept that nurses are supposed to be poor, work out of love, and should expect to be manhandled and abused. Afterall, they are angels of mercy which is just a step above being a martyr. Any self-respecting nurse who gets to wear a suit to work, and not have a dinner tray thrown at her by an irate patient (with the hospital talking heads warning her to just “forget the incident or else”) should feel defiled. If you’re not suffering, then you’re not a real nurse.

The other take on this is that working for big Pharma is dirty. Period. You touch their brochures, bottles, and cash a check, and you’re dirty. It’s a big bad industry, and only the corrupted Satan worshipers go and work there.

So let’s see. Well, this particularly nurse, from what I can recall, didn’t really have any complaints about the company she was working for. She didn’t say that she was being forced to lie and cheat and adjust clinical trial data so that a big potential blockbuster could come on the market. Nothing of the kind. And for those nurses who think that working for a pharm company is bad just because, well, consider that the next time your patient needs a drug. Do you refuse to administer the prescribed drugs because you think pharma is bad? Do you tell the patient that–sorry, I refuse to give you this insulin because pharma is bad bad bad, and I am defiling myself by having anything to do with them.

Yes, have nurses who think that working for pharma is dirty ever considered that aspect? They develop the drugs but you’re the one who gives them. Touche.

However, I tend to think that my first rendition of this rings truer. It’s the guilt complex, the martyr complex, the idea that nursing is a calling and you shouldn’t even be paid for the privilege of getting stuck with a contaminated needle or berated by a pinhead wearing a manager’s cap.