Research on the Medical Representative Against the Context of China’s New Medical Reform

Abstract

The medical representative has been controversial in China since it appears, and it has become an important part of China’s new medical reform. Since the medical representative was officially classified as an occupational category in the revision of the Standard Occupational Classification, the definition, content, and norms of the medical representative profession have been gradually clarified. This paper first reviews the definition, function and professional norms of medical representative both at home and abroad, and thereby makes a comparison between domestic and foreign development. Secondly, based on the interview of the employees from M Company and the method of participant observation, this paper applies the approach of case study to analyze the opinions of the medical representatives about the definition, content, and plan of their own profession before and after the new medical reform. In the last section, this paper puts forward some relevant suggestions on the development and standardization of the medical representative profession, providing a reference for the pharmaceutical industry to strengthen the construction of the medical representative team.