For readers of Atul Gawande and Siddhartha Mukherjee--a timely, vital
exploration of the burnout, grief, depression, and trauma that America's
healthcare system engenders among doctors, nurses, and medical
workers.
Practicing medicine is traumatic: coping with the death of a patient,
sharing a life-changing diagnosis, grieving futility in the face of a
no-win situation. The emotional burden placed on doctors, nurses, and
other healthcare practitioners is profound...and yet their suffering is
often displaced, dismissed, or unrecognized.
Here, Rachel Jones breaks the silence, daring to imagine a future where
every healthcare worker is provided with the right tools to process
grief, the space to integrate trauma, and--most importantly--the
knowledge that they're not alone. Drawing from the latest research and
more than 100 interviews with healthcare professionals across different
specialties, backgrounds, and institutions, Jones identifies how US
medicine fails its workers--and how it can do better.
Speaking with urgency about the systemic shortcomings that contribute to
widespread depression, burnout, suicide, and PTSD among physicians and
nurses--a culture of stoicism, the pressure of 80-hour workweeks--Grief
on the Front Lines shares the stories of everyday healthcare heroes and
offers a glimpse into the educational programs, retreats, therapeutic
offerings, and peer support networks already building a hopeful new
culture of medicine that cares for its own.
