The Harm We Cause

Phenomenon: In academic medicine and healthcare, individuals may encounter peers or superiors who obstruct, hinder, or undermine their professional advancement. This phenomenon, termed Career Sabotaging (CS), reflects a form of malicious envy that occurs regardless of a subject’s efforts toward career growth or promotion. Prompted by real-world experiences, this paper examines the conceptual understanding and defining components of CS.

Approach: An open-source online survey was conducted over 2 months with 109 anonymous respondents. The 18-item questionnaire observed whether CS was a recognized phenomenon in academia and medicine. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data.

Findings: Of the respondents, 87 (79.8%) were familiar with CS; 81 (74.3%) had personally experienced it, and 92 (84.4%) had observed it in peers. Most reported incidents occurred in non-academic professional workplaces (43.3% and 37%, respectively). The observations corroborated the description of the phenomenon of Career Sabotage.

Insights: The findings provide preliminary support that many professionals recognize and label a pattern of career obstruction as CS. The survey did not investigate whether those who reportedly experienced CS were disproportionately targeted by ethnicity, gender, age, ability, or sexual orientation. These questions and more should form part of future inquiry in understanding CS.