By EORNA Board

The newly released Swiss film Late Shift is a powerful and poignant portrayal of a nurse’s life on the brink. Set over the course of a single night in a busy Zurich hospital, the story unfolds like a pressure cooker — a fast-paced, emotionally raw narrative that refuses to flinch from the realities of understaffed wards, emotional exhaustion, and the impossible choices nurses are asked to make.

For many perioperative and hospital nurses across Europe, this film is not just fiction. It is recognition.

At EORNA, we believe it is vital that the public sees what nurses are truly experiencing — not only in the operating theatre, but in recovery rooms, wards, and corridors across our healthcare systems. While Late Shift is grounded in the Swiss context, its message resonates far beyond any single country. Burnout, short staffing, missed breaks, moral injury, and the tension between compassion and capacity are issues that cross all borders.

The film’s lead, played with quiet strength by Swiss nurse-turned-actor Julia Glaus, is not a hero in the Hollywood sense — she is a professional doing her job in impossible conditions. That is what makes her portrayal so affecting, and so accurate.

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EORNA encourages policymakers, healthcare leaders, and citizens to watch Late Shift — not simply as a film, but as a call to acknowledge the true state of healthcare today. Nurses are the backbone of patient care, yet they are too often taken for granted or left unheard in system-level conversations. This must change.

We stand in solidarity with nurses across Europe and beyond who continue to show up, care deeply, and fight for patient safety — even when the system doesn’t fight for them.

Let’s ensure Late Shift is more than just a film. Let it be a wake-up call.