INVESTIGATION OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY PRACTICE PERCEPTIONS OF MEDICAL REPRESENTATIVES OPERATING IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL PROMOTION INDUSTRY

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most critical sectors of the economy with its production and trade capacity. It has become an industrial area supported by many countries. There are high-number studies on a budget and patents are obtained. Medical representatives who sell the product in the pharmaceutical market have a great influence on the sale of medicine with their activation in the promotion and launch of the new product. The main factor in increasing sales in the pharmaceutical industry is the capabilities of the medical representatives and their ability to provide trust-based dialogues in communication. Therefore, being a high level of trust satisfaction in medical representatives in the field of work is important in terms of ensuring the launch of the drug. Occupational health and safety services must be provided by the employer during the promotion of medicines and the work of medical representatives. During the execution of the work, medical representatives are exposed to various risk factors such as stress, mobbing, work anxiety, filling the quota, and many hospital and doctor visits.

In this study, we tried to examine the factors that depend on the perception levels of medical representatives operating in the pharmaceutical promotion sector towards occupational health and safety practices. By applying a questionnaire to medical representatives, the answers given to the questionnaire were analyzed with the program "IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0" and the value of "Cronbach Alpha (α)" was found to be 0.784. The fact that the α value is in the range of 0.6 <α <0.8 indicates that the study is reliable. We determined that the representatives who participated in the study were male, between the ages of 30-39, married, bachelor's degree, working in the pharmaceutical industry, and the vast majority of them had basic OHS training. We determined that their practice perception of OHS depends on the desire to leave employment due to the increase in the service period, and not on factors such as gender, marital status, and monthly income. We determined that medical representatives are mostly exposed to psychosocial and biological risk factors and that it is a difficult profession.