The darker side of being a doctor

A surgeon with 13 years’ experience recounts personal “dark seasons” of depression, burnout and hopelessness triggered and intensified by work. Reacting to a colleague’s suicide, he argues that while mental ill health is multifactorial, the clinical workplace is often the critical exacerbating factor. He identifies three core drivers: loss of control over time and unpredictable on‑call demands; loss of practical support as clerical burdens, clunky IT, overbooked lists and constant interruptions erode teamwork and family life; and loss of meaning as medicine is industrialised by protocols, productivity targets and non‑clinical managers. These forces convert rewarding clinical tasks into measured outputs and reduce opportunities for restorative social contact.

Concrete examples bring the argument to life: 24/7 on‑call stretches, driving hundreds of kilometres between sites, sleeping in cars or hospital quarters, being forced to deliver personal milestones amid staffing shortages, operating lists timed and ordered by bookings staff, 70 phone calls in a 24‑hour shift, and fear that seeking help can trigger formal reporting. The surgeon frames these systemic pressures as drivers of emotional depletion and degraded patient care, portraying doctors not as altruistic professionals but as replaceable commodities within a bureaucracy, and urges recognition of how organisational design fuels clinician distress.