Imagine a job built around helping others.

Not just on an average day, but in their darkest hour—when they are worried, anxious, or alone.

Your job is to show up. To make a difference. And sometimes, that difference is life-changing.

You’d think it would be the best job in the world. A role with built-in purpose, enough to energise anyone.

So how did the NHS, a system built to care, end up designed to drain us? Where did it all go wrong?

A System That Was Meant to Lift Us

It was set up to help people in their time of need. Free at the point of use. A force for good.

I hope everyone who’s worked in the NHS has had that moment when a patient tells you how much your care has meant to them. It’s one of the best feelings in the world. To know you’ve made a meaningful difference. Sometimes, patients don’t even need to say the words. Their eyes and body language say it for them. That silent thank you gives me energy. It feeds my eternal fire.

But why do so many of us feel our energy is drained? Why are our inner fires burning out in a system that, on paper, should be enabling us to carry out one of the most noble undertakings there is: helping others in their time of need?

The Maze Between Us and the Patient

Getting to us is like navigating a maze. Patients must crack the code of triage systems just to be seen. They are expected to bend themselves to the structure of the service. To jump through hoops just to be offered an appointment—and then find a way to actually get there. It is exhausting. They arrive worn down. They carry a negative energy, even if they don’t mean to. Even if the person in front of them had nothing to do with the hoops they jumped through. But we are the first ones they speak to with an NHS badge. And so, we begin from a low base.

Failure, Baked In

We are set up to fail by design.

The computer takes fifteen minutes to start, then limps through the day. We lose time we are expected to claw back. Through no fault of our own, the unexpected happens. We are pulled away to help elsewhere. We go. It is the job. But when we return, the work is still waiting. The unexpected becomes routine. It creeps in because the system has no buffer, no slack, no margin. And we absorb it for the sake of the patients. There are not enough of us. So if it is not you, it will be no one. From the outside, it looks like we are coping. But quietly, slowly, the fire inside is dying.

Losing Purpose

On the surface, it doesn’t make sense.

How do people lose their sense of purpose in a system built to help others?

Because it has been taken for granted.

Because the people who are the system have not been supported, nurtured, or protected.

And so, the purpose fades.

The fire goes out.

And what’s left is emptiness.

Burnout by Design

Burnout isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature of the system.

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