How do I lead in healthcare when I miss caring for patients?

You fought hard to be trusted with patient care, and now the seat you earned has carried you away from it. There is a particular sorrow in that — you did not leave the bedside because you stopped loving it, but because you were good enough to be promoted past it. The loss is real. But think about what your distance now protects. The care you fought for happens better because someone who knows it from the inside is defending it upstairs — staffing it, funding it, shielding it from cuts. You are not gone from care. You are standing where it can be defended, and few can do that as well as someone who has done the work. Still, do not let yourself forget the feel of it. Find a way back into the room now and then — a shift, a round, time beside a patient. Let it remind you what you are fighting for. The seat is worth holding only if you never lose sight of the bed.