Just that really. Worked in the NHS nearly 20 years. I'm a senior doctor in a front line speciality and I just don't think I can go on. There is no option to move into private practice (there is no private practice in my speciality in the UK), but feel sad at the thought of chucking in nearly a quarter of a century of training (if you include medical school) and experience.
The list of reasons for leaving is varied and long and I know many colleagues feel similarly to me but either have better coping mechanisms than me, care less, or for various reasons leaving simply isn't an option. And I know my department is actually better than many.
I already work part time and took extended leave over the summer to see if a break would help. It hasn’t. My colleagues love me and value me - they regularly tell me, so it’s not about feeling undervalued in my team. It’s about being completely overwhelmed in a failing system......and the public having not one scoobie of an idea that their beloved NHS is about to implode as they daily pour through the doors with an ever increasing list of demands and sense of entitlement and an ever decreasing sense of responsibility for themselves.
I feel like I will have wasted most of my life if I leave but I spend my day being super nice to patients and relatives and come home and am grumpy and miserable to DH and DC - the people who mean most to me in the world. Its all wrong. I have absolutely no idea what I would do if I left. There must be other MNers who feel like this?