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Background. There are 32 teaching hospitals in France, including 30 University hospitals and 2 Regional teaching hospitals. Teaching hospitals have three roles: health care provision, training of healthcare professionals, and medical research. These roles lead to frequent interactions with pharmaceutical and medical device companies, inevitably raising major risks of conflicts of interests. Therefore, policies to manage conflict of interests (COI) are crucial. This study aims to examine COI policies in French teaching hospitals. . Methods. All French teaching hospitals (n=32) were included in this study. All hospitals websites were screened for institutional COI policies and curriculum on COI, using standardized keyword searches. More data were collected through a questionnaire addressed to each chief executive officer (CEO) of the teaching hospital. We used predefined criteria (n= 20) inspired by similar surveys on COI policies in French, US and Canadian medical schools, with some additions to reflect the local hospital context. A global score for each hospital, ranging from 0 to 58 (higher scores denoting stronger policies) was calculated by summing points obtained for each criterion. Results. Three out of 32 (9%) CEOs replied to the questionnaire. All 32 hospitals had websites; 16 hospitals listed policies or regulations on their websites or provided them on request. In December 2017, among the 32 hospitals, we found that 17 (53.1%) had rules and regulations for some items only, 4 (12.5%) have considered implementing a policy, two of which (6.3%) have begun implementation. and 15 (46.9%) had no evidence of COI policies and a null score. The maximum global score was 24 out of 58, with a mean of 3.50 ± 5.72. Conclusion. This is the first systematic assessment of COI policies in teaching hospitals in France. Such policies are needed to protect patients, clinicians and students from undue commercial influence. Despite public and political pressure for better management of COI since France’s benfluorex (Mediator) scandal of 2010, few teaching hospitals have implemented comprehensive and protective policies. We hope that periodic ranking of hospitals will contribute to raise awareness of the importance of COI policy and speed introduction.

Background Medical faculties have a role in ensuring that their students are protected from undue commercial influence during their training, and are educated about professional-industry interactions. In North America, many medical faculties have introduced more stringent conflict of interest (COI) policies during the last decade. We asked whether similar steps had been taken in France. We hypothesized that such policies may have been introduced following a 2009–2010 drug safety scandal (benfluorex, Mediator) in which COIs in medicine received prominent press attention. Methods We searched the websites of all 37 French Faculties of Medicine in May 2015 for COI policies and curriculum, using standardized keyword searches. We also surveyed all deans of medicine on institutional COI policies and curriculum, based on criteria developed in similar US and Canadian surveys. Personal contacts were also consulted. We calculated a summary score per faculty based on 13 criteria. [range 0–26; higher scores denoting stronger policies] Results In total, we found that 9/37 (24%) of French medical schools had either introduced related curriculum or implemented a COI-related policy. Of these, only 1 (2.5%) had restrictive policies for any category. No official COI policies were found at any of the schools. However, at 2 (5%), informal policies were reported. The maximum score per faculty was 5/26, with 28 (76%) scoring 0. Conclusion This is the first survey in France to examine COI policies at medical faculties. We found little evidence that protection of medical students from undue commercial influence is a priority, either through institutional policies or education. This is despite national transparency legislation on industry financing of health professionals and limits on gifts. The French National Medical Students Association (ANEMF) has called for more attention to COI in medical education; our results strongly support such a call.