The head of emergency medicine for Alberta's doctors association is challenging Premier Danielle Smith to join him on shift to see the frustration of patients jammed for hours in hallways and the moral injury of doctors looking into the eyes of the those who wait.

"It's this kind of vicarious trauma, this inability to help when we're helpers, that is causing us to leave," Dr. Warren Thirsk said in an interview.

"Unless you experience it, you don't really get it.

"When the premier has a health emer…