Grief on the Front Lines

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.

About the Author: RACHEL JONES is a freelance writer whose nonfiction has appeared in Time magazine, The Lancet, The Delacorte Review, Scientific American, The Antigonish Review, Columbia Journalism Review and many other publications. She obtained a BA in Sociology and Studio Art from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. After earning her MS from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Jones spent more than four years as a reporter in Caracas, Venezuela, including 1.5 years as a correspondent for The Associated Press. More recently, she has been exploring a longstanding interest in death and dying as a staff writer for SevenPonds, a website and online magazine that informs the public about a wide array of issues related to end of life. Jones, whose book Grief on the Front Lines is supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is the recipient of a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship. You can learn more about her work at rachelevangelinejones.com.