In his essay When Good Doctors Go Bad, the surgeon and writer Atul Gawande tells the cautionary tale of Hank Goodman, a highly respected and much sought-after orthopaedic surgeon – the sort of doctor whom other doctors would call on for their own family and friends.

As his reputation and popularity grew, so did his list of patients and his earnings. He was busier than any of his partners, which became for him “a key measure of his worth”, and he took to calling himself “The Producer”. On a typical day, he would be busy shuttling back and forth between his clinic and the operating theatre. For years, he worked more than 100 hours a week and did not see much of his family.