Dear healthcare professional

Today, I feel like giving a shout out to every health worker who has cried at the end of (or during!) a shift.

I cannot count the number of times I started to cry as soon as I got into my car, or as soon as I walked through my front door while my husband looked on helplessly.

I have cried with patients, I have cried in the toilet, and I have gone outside the hospital to scream into the night.

Why do I cry? Most times, it's the unrelenting nature of the job. It's the emotional roller coaster that I ride everyday. It's being yelled at by hostile (and sometimes understandably frustrated) patients. It's the taking on of other people's burdens. It's the learning of everything that could possibly go wrong with the human body so that you can help your patients while knowing that nothing really separates you from being on the receiving end of the care that you deliver. It's the knowing, and communicating, that this is the end of the road and nothing more can be done. It's deciding to withdraw active treatment. It's desperately wanting to give hope but not having any. It's the helplessness. It's the fighting against the system, and the system, she kicks back fiercely. And sometimes, it's the triumph over disease.

I have seen a patient leave a nasty review on a surgery's website because he had booked an appointment with a doctor and when he turned up, was told the doctor was off sick. He was seen by another doctor, but how dare a doctor go off sick when Mr Bart had scheduled an appointment with them! I have also worked in particularly challenging environments and struggled. A helpful colleague tried to tell me I shouldn't "feel things too much". I try not to take on too much of my patients' burdens, but how does one not feel too much? Is there a tap? A switch? Are we not humans? Do we have not fears and anxieties? And emotions? Do we not have families, personal turmoil, co-morbidities and the need to be understood, just like anyone else? Do we not make mistakes?

​Somehow - and sometimes, maybe just so that we can function - we are perceived (even by people who should know better) as super human. But we are not. We fall ill. We feel things. We are human. And this humanness, is it not this humanness that led us into our calling and profession in the first place? This noble profession of caring for people at their most vulnerable state?

Dear healthcare professional who cries on the job, it is okay to feel things. I see the blood of your sweat, the sweat of your work. Your load is my load. I am you, and I salute your courage.