The story
Valerie Kirchberger wanted to be a doctor since she was a child. Her mother was a psychoanalyst and told her early that there were people who were only alive because she worked with them. Valerie wanted that kind of impact.
She became a paediatrician. Her first two years, in a neonatal intensive care unit in Munich, were the work she had dreamed of: well organised, real time with the smallest patients you can imagine, saving lives in emergencies. Then she moved to one of Germany's most prestigious university hospitals, and with it into a different job. Less than a tenth of her day was spent with patients. The rest went to documenting, logging and defending every step for someone who would read the record later and had never been in the room.
In the film she describes a night on call as two jobs at once: keep the children alive, and write every step down without a single mistake. She stopped sleeping between shifts. Sleeping pills in the hardest weeks first, then more often, then with wine, because the pills alone did not quiet her head. One day at noon she lay down before a night shift, the alarm set for five hours later, and woke up vomiting.
"My dream had always been to become a doctor. But in that moment I realised: I can't be a good doctor anymore."
In 2017 she left clinical medicine. She says she did not walk away; she fell out. The exhaustion went, the anxiety, the pills. What stayed was emptiness, because she had left behind the one thing she wanted more than anything: sitting across from a person who needs help, and being able to give it.
She is well today. She has founded a health company, Evela Health, and has four children. She thinks about caring for patients every day.
"Twenty percent instead of ten, and it would have been the most rewarding job in the world. I would never have left."
