Like interest rates and food prices, burnout among healthcare providers in the US continues to rise.

From my perch — as a hospitalist in a large tertiary hospital — the sheer terror of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic has been replaced by a grinding fatigue fuelled by staffing shortages across the entire healthcare system.

Patients and their families are burnt out too, frustrated by delays and shortcomings in care that inevitably arise in an overworked and overwhelmed system.

The “Some superheroes don’t wear capes” COVID cheers are a thing of the past, not that we ever bought into the reverent premise of those accolades.