Concerned about the level of influence that pharmaceutical companies have over doctors' prescribing habits, the group is challenging doctors to pledge not to entertain "educational" visits by marketing representatives for a full year.

Representatives typically provide sandwiches and distribute branded paraphernalia while discussing their latest products, and studies indicate that doctors who routinely see them are more likely to prescribe more often and prescribe pricier drugs.

The "No Advertising Please" campaign is a provocative move among doctors, who are already ensnarled with drug companies, government regulators and patient advocates over moves to improve transparency in the pharmaceutical industry.

The Australian Medical Association is concerned that calls for pharmaceutical companies to disclose their payments and benefits to individual doctors will compromise the doctors' privacy.

Brisbane general practitioner Justin Coleman, who conceived No Advertising Please, said most doctors would not accept that pharmaceutical companies held sway over which drugs they prescribed, but the influence of marketing representatives could be insidious.

It might start with them handing the doctor sample medication, which the doctor passes out to patients, who adopt it as their brand of choice by default.

"I truly believe that all else being equal, a patient is better off seeing a doctor who doesn't see drug reps," Dr Coleman said.

"The doctors who see reps tend to prescribe less according to the accepted guidelines and more with the rep who just had lunch with them.

"Doctors seeing drug reps do prescribe more often, which isn't surprising - that's the point of the drug reps visiting them - and they also do cost the [patient] more because the drugs pushed by the reps are almost inevitably the more expensive ones."

The pharmaceutical industry spent more than $37 million on education events between October 2013 and March 2014.

But the AMA's Brian Morton said the campaign "infantilised" doctors, who benefited from learning about the new drugs and were capable of making independent decisions for their patients.

His own general practice received a drug company representative every day and it was an opportunity to ask questions about new products.

"I think it's quite insulting to doctors to say that they don't critically examine what's being presented," Dr Morton said. "We're not children."

No Advertising Please will be launched at the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners [RACGP] annual conference in Adelaide on Saturday.

Its signatories include health advocates, general practitioners, researchers, patient advocate group the Consumers Health Forum and members of the Doctors Reform Society and RACGP.

Medicines Australia chairman Martin Cross said it was already prohibited for pharmaceutical companies to make misleading claims about their products, and barring marketing representatives from educating doctors would compromise patient safety.

"The idea that you can ignore information from a pharmaceutical company that has conducted extensive research and development to help treat disease is laughable at best and negligent at worst," Mr Cross said.

The RACGP declined to comment on whether it supported the campaign.

The campaign comes as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is developing a new code of conduct for the pharmaceutical industry to improve transparency around payments that doctors receive.

Pharmaceutical companies are obliged to disclose the aggregate spent on payments to doctors without identifying the doctors.

Consumer advocates want it to be mandatory for pharmaceutical companies to disclose benefits such as consultancy fees and entertainment expenses paid to individual doctors.

The Consumers Health Forum of Australia says doctors who do not wish to disclose gifts and payments should only be able to remain anonymous if they pay back the value of the benefit.