Emmanuel Chilengwe is a biomedical science student in Zambia.
When the first pandemic lockdowns swept through hospitals, our hallways went silent. The absence of visitors felt practical at first, a necessary shield against viral spread. But weeks turned into months, and that silence began to echo with something deeper: distrust.
I remember walking into a patient’s room to find her eyes fixed on the door. She wasn’t waiting for the nurse. She was waiting for her daughter, the daughter she …
For years, I believed that the best clinicians were the ones who never stopped. We covered extra shifts, skipped meals, charted past midnight, and proudly wore exhaustion as a badge of honor. My patients were happy, my colleagues admired my work ethic, and I was quietly unraveling.
The slow slide into burnout
Burnout didn’t arrive like a crisis; it crept in as a constant background hum. I began to dread the pager’s …
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