Compassion fatigue is as damaging to a doctor’s health as to a patient’s

Medical training is a process of toughening up: take iron that’s vulnerable to rust, add carbon and make steel. That’s the hope. In a large university lecture hall, I remember a consultant standing in front of a PowerPoint slide showing two triangles, one widening to its base, the other tapering to a point. They represented how our clinical knowledge would expand with time, while our compassion would very probably diminish. It was a warning, but one delivered with a tone of inevitability. As a student I deeply resented this idea, but also worried it might prove necessary for survival.

Doctors and their patients are surprised when training’s protection proves not to be that of an alloy but rather a metal paint that can be scratched and worn away. Joanna Cannon realised in her first year of hospital work that her stethoscope was no ‘talisman’ against a breakdown, but rather a ‘risk factor’.