The cold coffee cups are the least of it. They sit abandoned on desks and in reporting rooms, small monuments to interruptions, unfinished tasks, and priorities that shift by the minute. Beside them stands the inevitable glass of lukewarm water, another reminder that even the most basic needs are often postponed in the service of someone else’s urgency.
What is far more difficult to ignore are the sleepless nights. The anxiety does not come from the complexity of the work itself. It comes from the knowledge that an unsigned radiology report, a delayed examination, or an overlooked finding can have real consequences for real people. Responsibility does not end when the shift ends. It follows you home, sits beside you at dinner, and frequently accompanies you to bed.
Yet this burden is often treated as if it were an ordinary occupational inconvenience. Many of us have missed school performances, family celebrations, and milestones that cannot be rescheduled. There is a particular bitterness in wondering whether work demands will once again prevent you from attending your child’s last day of school. No compensation package fully offsets moments that never return.
And compensation, incidentally, is often presented as the great equalizer, as if payment alone should silence any discussion about workload, accountability, or working conditions. It is an argument that sounds convincing only from a safe distance.
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Consider, for a moment, another profession built on precision, judgment, and public trust: aviation. If pilots operated under the same chronic understaffing, relentless administrative pressure, constant interruptions, and expectation of indefinite flexibility that many health care professionals experience, passengers would not be reassured by explanations about dedication and resilience. They would be asking why the system was allowed to function that way in the first place. The difference is not that pilots are less capable of handling pressure. The difference is that society recognizes the risks of normalizing it.
Health care has become remarkably dependent on professionalism compensating for structural shortcomings. We celebrate commitment while quietly expanding expectations. We praise dedication while assuming it is limitless. We call it resilience when, more often than not, it is simply necessity. The irony is that the system’s greatest strength, its people, has become its preferred safety net.
Cold coffee can be reheated. Missed family moments cannot. And responsibility, no matter how professionally carried, does not become lighter simply because it is expected.
Paul Dranichnikov is a physician in Sweden.
