The idea that medicine is a “calling” has been entwined deeply within our profession. From white coat ceremonies to recruitment posters featuring smiling doctors holding stethoscopes, we are told that to enter medicine is to answer a higher purpose. This framing is powerful. It inspires loyalty, fuels commitment, and builds identity. That is how the brainwashing begins as it also hides a dangerous truth: Labeling medicine as a calling has become a tool for exploitation.
I have no doubt at one point, even less than a few decades ago, medicine used to be a “calling.” Today, health care has been corporatized to a degree where it is unrecognizable. Hospitals, private equity-backed practices, and health care corporations eat well over the work of physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals and they keep looking for ways to squeeze more. They are profit-driven, not patient-driven. However, the language has not changed, we still say medicine is a “calling.” By doing so, institutions can demand long hours, relentless productivity, and unpaid labor without the scrutiny or resistance such demands would provoke in other industries.
This exploitation is often subtle and insidious, wrapped in the language of altruism. “Thanks for your dedication and all that you do,” hospital administrators might say. Or, “Your work saves lives.” To a profession steeped in the ethic of service, such appeals are persuasive. They try to normalize overwork and make it feel noble, rather than untenable.
This framing disproportionately affects women and other marginalized providers, who are already navigating structural inequities in medicine. When society applauds the self-sacrificing physician, it often expects women to absorb unpaid labor, both emotional and physical, without complaint. The result is a workforce that is exhausted, undervalued, and, ultimately, unsustainable.
Even the culture of medicine itself perpetuates the problem. We tell stories of residents who worked 100-hour weeks, attendings who missed family milestones, and nurses who endured relentless schedules. These tales are framed as inspiration, not as cautionary tales about structural exploitation. Medicine, at its heart, is an important and meaningful profession. But fulfilling work is not the same as a divine “calling.” Work is labor. It deserves fair compensation, boundaries, and respect. Framing medicine as a calling has allowed corporations to bypass these fundamental rights and expectations.
Reframing medicine as work does not diminish the importance of the profession. It acknowledges the skill, intelligence, and compassion required to care for patients. It recognizes that health care providers have lives outside the hospital, families to support, and bodies and minds that can only sustain so much stress before breaking. Recognizing medicine as work allows us to fight for a system that supports both patients and providers. Anything less is exploitation.
Santoshi Billakota is a neurologist.
