Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents

“Once you decide, WAIT 24-48 hours, or at least one night’s sleep, before you communicating your decision’ – Anonymous F I E L D N O T E S Maximize career fulfillment Minimize negative stress (weight = 0.24 Maximize learning (weight = 0.08) Maximize influence over decisions (weight = 0.29) Maximize financial stability (weight = 0.39) Max flex schedule (wt = 0.20) Max leisure time (wt = 0.10) Max health (wt = 0.50) Max collegiality (wt = 0.20) Max new skills (wt = 0.50) Max intellect (wt = 0.50) Min bureaucracy (wt = 0.20) Min supervision (wt = 0.20) Max respect (wt = 0.20) Max opportunities (wt = 0.40) Max career flex (wt = 0.10) Max compensation (wt = 0.90) We conclude by noting that based on John’s FOH and his imporantanceweights shown in Figure 2, he can nowscore each actual job offer he is facing. For example, to compute the Financial Stability portion of his score, he would use: 0.39*(0.10*Career Flex score + 0.90*Compensation score) Notice how we mutliplied the second level weight (0.39) with the third level weights (0.10 & 0.90). Doing this guarantees our weights will always sum to 1.00. Decision analysis is a rich and diverse field that includes various aspects of pyschology, mathematics, and statistics that is used across a wide variety of disciplines frommanagement to medicine. There is even a journal, called Medical Decision Making , devoted to applying decision analysis tomedical decisions. My objectivewas to demonstrate how decision analysis can lead you to choose the best job offer based on your own preferences. Remember to draw on the tools you have spent years honing as a physician: take a step back, be the calm person in the room, lean on both your gut and the objective data. Applying those tools will help whittle that complex differential diagnosis to something that is clear, manageable, and headed for a good outcome! Figure 2: FOH with ImportanceWeights Decision Analysis Applied to Job Selection 281 WWW.PHYSICIANCAREERPLANNING.COM