In drone operations, fatigue and overload are treated as safety risks — not personal failures.

I think healthcare can learn from that.

Clinicians work in high-pressure, screen-heavy, alert-heavy environments, much like remote pilots. When people become overwhelmed, the question should not only be, “How can they become more resilient?”

It should also be:

What about the system is creating unsafe levels of cognitive load?

Drone operations use risk assessments, go / no-go thresholds, alert prioritization, and post-incident log reviews to protect the human operator.

Healthcare could apply similar thinking to reduce alert fatigue, staffing strain, administrative overload, and burnout.

Highly reliable systems do not depend on superhuman performance. They are designed to support human limits.

What would healthcare look like if burnout was treated as a system design issue instead of an individual weakness?