Always Short Today: When Shutdowns Meet Staffing Collapse

When the government shut down, 41 percent of HHS staff are furloughed — and physicians feel the aftershocks in delayed care, unpaid time, and moral injury.

A federal shutdown sounds political — until it lands in your exam room.

It shows up as stalled labs, paused claims, and the familiar message: “We’re waiting for CMS approval.”

I walked the hospital floors during COVID and watched systems bend under the weight of crisis. Back then, we called it unprecedented. Now, it’s routine.

This month, 41 percent of HHS staff — more than 32,000 people — were furloughed in the first week of the shutdown (Healthcare Dive, 2025). That means delayed payments, frozen safety-net programs, and one more day of uncompensated care for the clinicians who stay.

Physicians aren’t just tired — they’re carrying invisible work: fixing broken workflows, double-checking labs, absorbing hours lost to policy gridlock. The AAMC projects a shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2036; that gap widens with every week the system stalls.

Shutdowns don’t make headlines for burnout, but they should. They pull the same thread that’s already frayed by EHR fatigue and chronic understaffing. They teach clinicians to “just push through until X is done” — and then X moves again.

You know that moment between exhaustion and resolve — the one where you realize you’re not sure how much more “pushing through” is left in you?

That’s where hope lives.

Hope isn’t naïve. It’s how healing starts.
Even in a system that feels unsustainable, something steady remains — your training, your integrity, your compassion.

When I walked hospital floors during COVID, I saw that quiet endurance everywhere — clinicians holding care together with the thinnest of margins. Now, as policies shift and staffing gaps widen, that same hope still matters. Not as optimism — but as oxygen.

The barn still stands, weathered and real. And so do you.

You can’t stop the shutdown. But you can stop your body from living in one.

EMDR Intensives help physicians reset — not by talking about the stress, but by teaching your nervous system to stand down from it.

You deserve presence, not permanent adrenaline.

👉 Learn more and book a strategy call to explore how resetting your system can sustain your career.