“How can you put a price on someone’s life?” …and four other questions from work experience students
This summer, YHEC welcomed six work experience students into the world of health economics. Their questions reminded me that the next generation isn't afraid to challenge assumptions that many of us have long accepted. Here are five of the biggest questions they asked, and why they matter for everyone working in healthcare today.
The best work experience students have a remarkable ability to ignore all the assumptions the rest of us have quietly accepted over the years. They ask the questions that everyone else is thinking but is too polite, too busy, or too accustomed to the status quo to ask. These are deceptively simple questions, but they usually uncover some of the biggest challenges in health economics. Not every question was about health economics, of course. We also covered the important topics, like how long lunch breaks are, whether anyone actually enjoys meetings and why everybody has two screens on their desk.
So, here are five of my favourite health economics questions from work experience students, along with my attempts to answer them.