Striking the Right Balance
Year: 2025
Type: editorial
Abstract: E arly career (EC) cardiologists often face chal- lenges in reconciling societal and personal expectations with the realities of daily professional demands.Balancing career and personal life while managing financial and social issues can be difficult, adversely affecting well-being and leading to burnout and dissatisfaction.Despite significant geographical differences in educational programs, job contracts, and social structures, work-life balance represents a major issue for medical doctors worldwide, particularly during the transition from training to EC. Medical practice is a profession that requires dedication, commitment, and a constant pursuit of knowledge, making it essential to maintain passion and determination.However, the well-being of clinicians is often neglected in this process, despite being increasingly recognized as a crucial factor in the health care profession, which directly impacts patients' care quality.International societies can promote well-being through advocacy and initiatives that encourage discussion, peer advice, and mentoring.The American College of Cardiology (ACC) Early Career International Working Group has proposed several initiatives focusing on global perspectives on work-life balance, including webinars and debates at major congresses, highlighting significant issues common to the EC cardiology community that need addressing.The present paper represents a call to action, aimed at highlighting the barriers to well-being among EC cardiologists globally and across a wide spectrum of conditions, comparing geographical differences.We also provide potential solutions for addressing these challenges. CURRENT STATUS AND ISSUESOne of the major barriers to career development worldwide is the prevalence of rigid and hierarchical systems, often characterized by inequity.In Asia, a deeply rooted hierarchical structure exists between trainees and EC vs senior cardiologists, both during and after training.Paradoxically, this may inadvertently lead to a lack of leadership opportunities for junior doctors and hinder their development of crucial skills such as decision-making and initiative-taking, which require development from an early stage.This hierarchy is embedded in culture and encumbers on subsequent generations, following a "passing it on" strategy, with low expectations of improvement.This entrenched system generates feelings of powerlessness and inevitability, worsening the morale of junior doctors and negatively impacting patients' care.
Source: JACC Advances
Institutions: Ospedale degli Infermi, Kettering General Hospital, King Abdulaziz Medical City, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Kettering General Hospital NHS Trust, Real Hospital Português, Ibrahim Cardiac Hospital & Research Institute, University of Cambridge, National University Heart Centre Singapore, Nairobi Hospital, Memorial Healthcare System, Instituto Cardiovascular de Buenos Aires
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,936
OpenAlex ID: W4407175149