I have been watching The Pitt lately, and it really surprised me. At first, I anticipated another medical drama. You know the ones, fast paced with big emotions that mostly focused on interpersonal relationships. But the longer I watched, the more I felt that familiar ache in my chest. 

Because emergency medicine is emergency medicine, whether it’s human or animal, and the truths are universal. It’s high stakes and a little bit of chaos wrapped in competence and teamwork.

The Pitt

The Pitt describes the relentless pressure. The constant rollercoaster of empathy. The way you barely have time to process one outcome before the next crisis demands your attention. To the point where people follow you to the bathroom to ask questions about the next treatment.

In vet med, I live this every shift. The phone rings. The doors open. Another life needs you, and they need you now. You move from puppy visits to euthanasia with no pause button. No perfect conditions. Just decisions, over and over again, made with imperfect information and a regulated nervous system… or not.

One of the biggest truths the show captures is how emotional labor is invisible, but cumulative. You can tuck it away for so long, but it sneaks up on you. The characters don’t just carry the medicine, they carry the grief, the fear, the anger, the hope. And slowly, you can see how that weight changes them. This shows up in veterinary medicine too.

The Body Keeps the Score is book that I really love that describe how these changes impact the physical body too.

The Research Says

What The Pitt portrays is actually backed by decades of research on emergency and critical care professionals. Studies consistently show that burnout is driven less by “one bad case” and more by cumulative emotional load over time. As vet, I experience this too. Chronic exposure to high-acuity decision-making, emotional labor, and constant vigilance keeps the nervous system locked in fight-or-flight, elevating cortisol and impairing recovery (Shanafelt et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings; McEwen, Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences). 

Importantly, competence does not protect you. High performers burn out at equal or higher rates because skill doesn’t blunt the body’s stress response (West et al., The Lancet). What does protect clinicians is connection. Research shows that co-regulation through peer support, debriefing, humor, and being emotionally seen reduces cortisol, improves resilience, and lowers burnout risk (Eisenberger, Trends in Cognitive Sciences). Suppressing emotion, on the other hand, increases depersonalization and exhaustion over time (Hülsheger & Schewe, Journal of Applied Psychology). The takeaway is clear: medicine requires urgency, but sustainability requires regulation, recovery, and community. You don’t need to be tougher. The science says you need support.

The Takeaways

Connection saves people.

The characters who survive emotionally are not the ones who are the toughest or most detached. They’re the ones who talk to each other in the hallway, make meaningful relationships with patients, who cracks a jokes. They're the people who says, “That one got to me,” instead of pretending everything's fine.

Neuroscience backs this up. Co-regulation is sharing emotional load with safe people. This literally reduces cortisol and increases resilience. Community isn’t a nice-to-have, i’s a biological requirement for sustainability in high-stress professions. This is the importance of having a great team around you.

Competence does not protect you from exhaustion.

You can be brilliant, skilled, respected and still become depleted. When your job requires constant vigilance, rapid decision-making, and emotional containment, your nervous system pays a price unless there’s intentional recovery built in.

And here’s the lesson I keep coming back to as a veterinarian and a leader: medicine requires urgency, but it also requires a sustainable life requires intentional slowing elsewhere.

I can’t practice medicine as if every moment of our lives is an emergency. It would be unsustainable. 

So what can I take away from The Pitt as veterinarians?

- You are not weak for feeling impacted by the work. You are human.
- Detachment is not resilience, regulation is.
- Talking about hard cases is protective.
- Team culture matters more than individual toughness.
- You don’t have to earn rest by breaking.

Watching the show reminded me how easy it is for high-capacity people to normalize intensity and forget that it’s okay to come down from it.

If The Pitt stirred something in you, that mix of pride, grief, nostalgia, and exhaustion, let that be information, not judgment.

Ask yourself:
- Where do I need more support? Therapy, coaching? Meditation?

- How can I continue to build my community? Join The Evolved Vets Membership today. 

- Where can I soften instead of push? Where is my body feeling this right now? 

- Who do I let see the real impact of my work?

You don’t have to leave medicine to heal or even process what it is like to work in the vet field. You can be a great vet and experience all the ups and downs too.