Initial challenges in the career of ophthalmologists

Abstract

Dear Editor, The curriculum of most ophthalmology courses does not include or has not emphasized the fundaments of management, marketing, economics, and accounting in private practice. Consequently, the young ophthalmologists enter the labor market without a proper understanding of these important aspects of a career.The inexperience in dealing with routine tasks of a business, such as taxes, cash flow, and bank loans, are factors that can lead to the closure of the medical office in its first years of life (1) . The aim of this study is to describe the main challenges faced by young ophthalmologists in the first decade of their career.We conducted a descriptive study with physicians from Brazil, who attended an ophthalmology congress. Inclusion criteria were as follows: being medical ophthalmologist under 40 years of age, and having completed more than 5 and less than 10 years of specialization in ophthalmology. The procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration From the database of the congress, participants who met the inclusion criteria were randomly invited to answer two questionnaires.In the first questionnaire, by e-mail, we collected data on gender, age, time of completion of specialization, and the answer to the fol lowing question: What were the three major challenges in your personal experience during the exercise of ophthalmology? Challenges were defined as the personal choices made at the beginning of the career that contributed negatively to professional success. After accounting for the initial results, the 10 most frequently mentioned answers were listed.In the second questionnaire, the same volunteers were once again interviewed by e-mail and asked to choose, among this 10-item list, the three major challenges in their personal experience. The order of presentation of the options was randomly different for each volunteer to provide equal exposure of each item.Forty-eight ophthalmologists were interviewed, with a mean age of 37 years (SD: 2 years, range: 33-40 years) and mean time of completion of the specialization course in ophthalmology of 8 years (SD: 1 year, range: 5-10 years). Twenty-four (50%) were male. All agreed to participate. Table 1 details the frequency of answers (144 citations=3 per respondent).The lack of administrative and financial knowledge was the most common difficulty faced by young ophthalmologists in the first decade of their careers. This fact is unfortunate, considering the various sources of supplementary education that can meet much of this