Barbara asks:  Anyone care to discuss the ethics of direct marketing of
breast pumps to hospitalized new mothers by staff who also have private
depots or pump
>sales businesses?  Is this fair game, the convenient provision of needed
>products, or is this a conflict of interest?

I too have concerns about this issue.  I have heard tales of a staff nurse
rents pumps out of her van in the hospital parking lot!  This  is an
extreme case; nonetheless, it poses many questions for me.

1)  As Marsha said in her post, no hospitals allow staff to sell Tupperware
to patients.  How are staff who directly market their side-businesses to
patients any different?

2)  If rental/sales pumps are readily available, mightn't staff be quicker
to over-encourage their use?  It is easy to see how this practice has
innocently evolved from the nurse with a home depot who brought in a rental
pump for a mom with a premie.  Sounds like it has gotten way out of hand in
some settings, though.

Personally, I no longer rent breastpumps or sell BF aids for a number of
reasons, one of which my personal concern that ready availability of
gadgets might tempt me to overuse them.  (Of course it helped that
competent equipment rental/sales agents were available in my area.)

I'm interested to hear what others have to say about this.


Cindy Turner-Maffei
Massachusetts, USA