If you have caught yourself, after a bad shift, quietly working out whether you could leave, you are not broken and you are not weak. You are having the most common thought in the NHS workforce right now. It helps to see that in numbers, because the feeling can be isolating in a way the reality is not.
Verified stat Nearly 3 in 10 NHS staff (29%) often think about leaving their organisation. NHS Staff Survey 2024 (28.83%, rounded).
Almost a third of your colleagues are having the same thought often, not once. The person next to you on the ward, the one who seems fine, is statistically quite likely to be thinking it too. This is not a personal failing quietly spreading through individuals. It is a systemic signal showing up in almost everyone.
Verified stat 61% of trainee doctors are at moderate or high risk of burnout, and around one in five are at high risk. GMC National Training Survey 2025.
When most of a workforce is at some level of burnout risk, the thought that follows it is not a symptom of your weakness. It is a rational response to the conditions. Blaming yourself for having it is like blaming yourself for feeling cold in a room where the heating is broken. The thought is data about the room, not a verdict on you.
What the thought is, and is not
Thinking about quitting is not the same as quitting, and it is not something to be ashamed of or to suppress. It is your mind doing exactly what it should: registering that something is not sustainable and looking for options. The healthiest thing you can do with it is neither to act on it in a single exhausted moment nor to bury it, but to give it some daylight. What specifically is driving it? Is it the hours, the environment, the loss of meaning, the pay, or the sense there is no way out?
Often the relief comes not from leaving but from discovering there are real options, so the thought stops feeling like a trap. There are honest routes out of clinical work that keep your experience in play, and there are ways to test them without leaping. Our map of where clinicians go and our piece on portfolio careers are calm places to start when you are ready.
If it is more than a passing thought
If the thought is heavier than that, or it is with you a lot, please treat it as something that deserves support rather than something to carry alone. You can speak to your GP, and confidential help is available through NHS Practitioner Health, which is designed specifically for doctors and other health professionals. If you are in crisis, the Samaritans are available at any hour on 116 123.
Wanting a different life is not a betrayal of the one you trained for. It is a normal, common, and reasonable thing to feel, and you are in very large company.
Cheers,
Dr. Ron
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The figures here come from Career Co-Pilot, my platform for non-clinical NHS career intelligence, built on real NHS job-pack data. Full breakdown at careercopilot.academy.
Sources: NHS Staff Survey 2024 (share who often think about leaving). GMC National Training Survey 2025 (burnout risk). Related reading: Brief 1, Brief 8. Support: NHS Practitioner Health, Samaritans 116 123.