Misplaced marketing “It hurts. Fix It.” The patients’ lament and unhealthy medical care marketing

Focuses on the dilemma for health care professionals of providing customer satisfaction without being significantly influenced by the advertising claims of pharmaceutical manufacturers and other commercial concerns. Notes that marketing could be a tool for encouraging patients to be more involved in their own health care, resulting in a possible doctor‐patient therapeutic alliance of joint decision making toward a goal of long‐term improved health. Also notes that there are limits to the benefits of seeing medicine as a business in the strictest sense of the word. Warns that, in health care, the customer does not always know best.