This activity is designed for participants to reflect on their own career development. Participants should consider how integrity, personal credit, and satisfaction weigh against the value of effective health promotion.
1) Jeff can either become a physician or a hospital executive. If he becomes a physician, he will save hundreds of patients every year by performing lifesaving surgeries. If he becomes an executive and donates his earnings to an effective charity, he will personally save fewer lives, if any. However, if Joe becomes a hospital executive, it is very likely that someone else will become a physician who helps just as many people. If Joe becomes a physician, the person who would occupy that executive role probably wouldn’t donate at all.
a. Jeff should become a pharmaceutical executive
b. Jeff should become a physician
2) Alice is deciding where to work. She can get a job in a lab doing research on diabetes, and the lab will likely make significant breakthroughs on the disease in the next few years. But the lab is overstaffed. Though she would love to be a part of the research, she knows that her own contribution would be small. Her other offer is for a lab that would enable her to do research that no one else is doing, which investigates a rare disease. But this research has a high chance of failure and even if it succeeds, few people have the disease.
a. Alice should work for the overstaffed diabetes lab
b. Alice should work on the rare disease
3) Martha does not want to take an unpaid medical internship because she believes that it is exploitative. But she doesn’t want to be under-employed due to her lack of a credential.
a. Martha should take the unpaid internship.
b. Martha should not take the internship.
4) Ali believes if he becomes a social worker he will promote public welfare on balance, but he will also potentially enforce an unjust law through his involvement with the family courts. Social work pays fairly well and he’d be good at it. On the other hand, he could become an art therapist. If he becomes an art therapist he will make just enough money to pay his bills.
a. Ali should choose social work
b. Ali should choose art therapy
5) Seth is a public health communications professional. Part of his job is to retweet and cover interesting stories from the internet. Recently, a public figure died of a preventable illness due to unhealthy lifestyle choices. If Seth publicizes the story, he could also deter people from making unhealthy choices. But the story could also promote stigma against people who make unhealthy choices.
a. Seth should cover the story
b. Seth should not cover the story
6) Wilma manages a large socially responsible healthcare organization. The organization received two grants, and she can only take one. The first grant would convert their building to use cleaner energy, which would save money and help the environment. The second grant would train clinicians to persuade women to comply with prenatal care guidance. It's unclear whether it would work and it would be revenue-neutral.
a. Wilma should invest in clean energy.
b. Wilma should invest in prenatal care compliance.
7) Andy manages the hospital cafeteria. He can either provide vegan and other healthy meals or he can provide unhealthy food that patients and staff enjoy more. The unhealthy menu would be more profitable for the hospital.
a. Andy should offer the healthy menu.
b. Andy should offer the unhealthy menu.
8) Diana wants to make the biggest long-term impact with her life’s work. She loves children and she’s great at orthopedic surgery. She could either have a large family or she could continue to perform orthopedic surgery full time. She cannot do both.
a. Diana should have as many children as she can.
b. Diana should do orthopedic surgery.
9) Jamie runs a company that provides daily care for homebound seniors. He is fairly certain that immigration restrictions are unjust. As an employer, he can hire migrant workers at a lower wage. Or, if Jamie pays a higher wage, he will be required to hire citizens. The business will be more profitable if he employs the migrants.
a. Jamie should hire the migrants.
b. Jamie should hire citizens.
10) Martina is the manager of an office with 50 employees and a limited budget. After some staffers identified micro-aggressions at work, Martina's human resources coordinator suggested that she hire a diversity training consultant to talk to the employees about implicit bias. Martina is skeptical that this training will effectively address the staffers' complaints, and she worries that it would cost too much time and money and might be counterproductive. On the other hand, Martina worries that if she doesn't hire the consultant, she will lose credibility with the staff.
a. Martina should hire a consultant.
b. Martina should not hire a consultant.
11) Ellen coordinates a primary care service network that offers services to low-income people in a rural area. One of the physicians in the network, Dave, has argued that the other physicians and PAs should voluntarily take a 10% pay cut to pay higher wages for low-paid medical assistants. The other physicians agree with Dave publicly. However, privately, two physicians and a PA informed Ellen that they already felt underpaid and that a pay cut would make them look for other jobs. Ellen is worried she could not fill their positions if they left.
a. Ellen should cut pay.
b. Ellen should not cut pay.