Academic medical centers should prohibit doctors, medical residents, and students from accepting gifts, free food, or free travel from drug and medical-device manufacturers, the Association of American Medical Colleges recommends in a report released today.

The report is the result of two years of study by a panel charged with finding ways to avoid potentially dangerous conflicts of interest at the nation’s 129 medical schools.

Although the report focuses on interactions with drug and medical-device companies, the association said conflict-of-interest policies should be broad enough to encompass ties with makers of other medical equipment and services. It called on those industries to “voluntarily discontinue those practices that compromise professionalism as well as public trust.”

“Over recent decades, medical schools and teaching hospitals have become increasingly dependent on industry support of their core educational missions,” the report states. “This reliance raises concerns because such support, including gifts, can influence the objectivity and integrity of academic teaching, learning, and practice.”

Among the practices the association concluded were inappropriate are: “providing gifts to individuals (even when these gifts have educational or practice-related utility); distributing samples directly to practitioners; providing food, meals, or travel expenses; establishing speakers’ bureaus; and ghostwriting.”

Although many doctors and residents say they are not swayed by freebies, the report notes that such gifts can cause subtle shifts in prescribing behaviors and create the perception that doctors are being “bought” by industry.

Several top medical doctors recommended a similar crackdown on industry gifts in an article published two years ago in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The medical-college association’s Executive Council is scheduled to consider the report in June. —Katherine Mangan