Question

Paula is 20 years old working for an employee health clinic at a local medical school. Paula files, runs errands, types correspondence and orders supplies for the office and clinic. She initiates all of the orders to the appropriate vendor when the nurses inform her that they are running low on supplies. However, there is one vendor that calls her regularly to see if they need gloves or syringes. When supplies were low, Paula would have this vendor fill the order. One day, she received a package from this company. Inside were an underwater camera and a note thanking her for the business. A few weeks later the vendor called to get approval to ship more supplies. Paula declined as informed him supplies were not low. The salesperson became annoyed and reminded her that they were under a contract and would face a penalty if the supplies were not shipped and paid for within a specified time period. Paula knew nothing of a contract and assumed that it was set up before she started working there. The salespersons told her that after payment was received, they would send her a stereo to thank her for continued business.

Q1: If you decided to accept the gifts, identify who might be affected by your decision and how.

Q2: Explain what each affected person would want you to do about the issue.

Answer 1

Q1. If you decided to accept the gifts such a serious industry like; health care, it can have serious implications such as the propriety of medical treatments given to patients and hence gift-giving can be considered a little too much like bribery. Hence not only the health clinic’s interest is at stake also the end users’ i.e. patients’ interest is also at stake

Q2. The affected person would want us to report the issue the employer and reconsider the quality of supplies and make sure that no gift is accepted in future.