Pfizer Giving Stanford $3 Million Grant For Improving Doctors' Training

A leading medical school that said a few years ago it wouldn't take industry money to fund specific continuing education courses for doctors and a big drugmaker that said it would no longer give money to for-profit education companies have struck a $3 million deal to find new ways to keep doctors' knowledge up to date.

Yup. Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, is giving Stanford University, a three-year, no-strings-attached grant to teach doctors about advances in medicine after they're in practice, the New York Times reported.

Stanford docs will pick the topics. Some possibilities, according to a Stanford statement, include reducing surgical infections, better diabetes management and getting patients to use smoking-cessation programs.

The educational programs are likely to make use of all sorts of simulation, a Stanford strength, rather than lectures to make their points.

Columbia's David Rothman, a frequent critic of industry's influence medical education told the Times, "It's fair to say Stanford is once again leading the pack." But Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, who runs the project PharmedOut to counter industry marketing, said, "the announcement is self-satirizing."