Winnie,
  Amazing that your boss doesn't see any problem
with the baseball ticket raffle. A couple of thoughts
come to mind about how to deal with this issue.
1. Is there a comparable issue in another part of
the hospital where the breech of ethics is
more obvious (well, I don't know how much more
obvious you can get, but...)? I can't think of
any good examples, but I'm not a nurse so I don't know
what comes through hospital doors.

2. If there are no guidelines or protocols in the hospital
policies, can you come up with a draft of one that address
the hospital's concerns. I don't understand the issue of
visitor ID, but how could you address the hospital's
concerns in a policy you develop?

3. Find out if there are others in different units of
the hospital who have similar concerns about things
going on there and get together to approach the
administration. More voices from more departments
will go farther.

4. Seems to me that these "perks" and gifts are part of the
medical culture and it will take a lot of effort from
a lot of different directions to make progress.
Also, communication among different hcps about these
kinds of issues is a good thing, just very labor intensive.

How about organizing an in-service on ethical/marketing issues
in general in which this plays prominently on the agenda?
Maybe even involving more than one hospital so you can learn
from one another how these issues are dealt with.
I think that change will not happen quickly, but it is very
important to put (and keep) these issues on the table, so that
people think about them and begin to see them as problems.

Good luck, keep us posted.
  Naomi Bar-Yam

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html