Burnout, stress and drinking in the NHS | Letters

Your article (Oncologists suffer alarming rates of burnout and stress, research finds, 17 February) ought not to surprise us. Nor is burnout confined to hard-pressed specialists: it is widespread at every level of practice and even among medical students. Doctors expect a lot of themselves, but if demands pile up and become unrelenting, the ability to adapt well has neurobiological limits. Neuroscience shows that intimate contact with suffering is physically and emotionally demanding, and that p