Rachel Jones - Grief on the Front Lines

Rachel Joness book, birthed during the pandemic of the century, is filled with painful truths about the American healthcare system that sound the clarion call for change.

Jessica Zitter, MD, author of Extreme Measures

Urgent, powerful, healing. Nurses and doctors should read this book, but hospital administrators most of all. US healthcare has reached a crisis point where those who care for others need care themselves to recover from epidemic levels of burnout. Grief on the Front Lines shows how that caring work can and must be done.

Theresa Brown, PhD, RN, author of the New York Times best seller The Shift

Grief on the Front Lines is a clarion call for a more compassionate approach to medicinenot only for our patients, but for ourselves as medical professionals. Rachel Jones succeeds in her attempt to fill the void in challenging the medical establishment to acknowledge the grief we experience by routinely facing the reality of death and dying and to create a more humane working environment, strengthen necessary support systems, and remove barriers to mental health services. She explores innovative approaches to addressing the most common causes of grief and distress, while acknowledging the limits of self-care. Grief on the Front Lines inspires a vigorous response to the needs of an overextended and downtrodden healthcare workforce, particularly as we emerge from a devastating global pandemic.

Anthony Mazzarelli, MD, CEO of Cooper University Health Care and co-author of Compassionomics

Honoring the experiences and attendant grief of healthcare workers, Rachel Jones provides well-sourced documentation of the events of the pandemic and provides a call to action to bring a more compassionate healthcare system into being.

Rana Awdish, MD, author of In Shock

Grief on the Front Lines could be called The Real Story Behind Healthcare. Rachel Jones makes great effort to weave this story in which healthcare providers often become molded by the suffering they have been inspired to try to palliate or cure. She relies on research and personal narratives to place a human face on those called to serve others. This story is a call to action to ensure that we heal while healing others. May this book serve to inspire healing and reveal that we are never alone in the struggle. Its not only important to Pause at death, but also to Pause in the pursuit of healing and life.

Jonathan Bartels, RN, innovator of the Medical Pause

In Grief on the Front Lines Rachel Jones takes us into the lives of the remarkable men and women who stand with us at times of loss and death and brings their own pain to life. A harrowing and unforgettable book.

Michael Shapiro, professor of journalism, Columbia University

Rachel Jones has made an invaluable contribution to the literature on trauma and loss. Grief on the Front Lines is a devastating account of the heavy emotional burden placed on healthcare workers and a powerful indictment of a system that fails to care for its own. Passionately researched and rendered with eloquence and humanity, Joness book reminds us that healers also need to healin todays world more than everand that empathy and connectedness are the surest balms for a grieving heart.

Alex Stone, author of Fooling Houdini

Frontline healthcare workers have always been expected to balance their personal lives with the emotional realities of comforting those facing life-threatening illness. Most providers in hospitals, from emergency rooms to intensive care units and nursing homes, face an onslaught of unrelenting suffering and death that today has become even more tragic in the presence of infectious disease. Very few can bear the massive burden of grief and trauma without life-changing consequences.

William Spear, end-of-life educator, Fortunate Blessings Foundation, Second Response Initiative, and Care for the Caregiver Program

Sobering, heartbreaking, and filled with hope, Grief on the Front Lines is a must-read not only for every doctor, administrator, and healthcare worker, but for everyone subject to illness and death. Pulling back the curtain on the avalanche of stress, violence, and grief in the field charged with our well-being, this book brings together revealing personal accounts, latest research, and culture-shifting resources available for those working in the healthcare system. Its a seed of a new paradigm we cannot afford to miss.

Vera de Chalambert, MTS, religious scholar, writer, and spiritual storyteller

Healthcare workers often carry deep emotional and spiritual wounds that are not visible and are sometimes left untended. Grief on the Front Lines provides a much-needed exploration of the effects of trauma and grief on the very people we rely on to help us heal. Rachel Jones gently explores these wounds and shares strategies that healthcare workers can employ to support their own healing and give them strength to continue their work. The book highlights a growing movement toward recognizing and addressing the human needs of healthcare workers and ensuring the well-being of these highly committed individuals. With stories from mental health professionals, trauma specialists, and hospice providers, these accounts of grief and healing offer hope for doctors and other healthcare workers who are struggling with the challenges of the profession.

Rev. Don Chatfield, PhD, Lead Pastor, All Souls Interfaith Gathering, Shelburne, Vermont

Copyright 2022 by Rachel Jones. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Huichin, unceded Ohlone land
aka Berkeley, California
Cover art gettyimages.com/Sandra M
Cover design by Jess Morphew
Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Grief on the Front Lines: Reckoning with Trauma, Grief, and Humanity in Modern Medicine is sponsored and published by North Atlantic Books, an educational nonprofit based in the unceded Ohlone land Huichin (aka Berkeley, CA), that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are distributed to the US trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jones, Rachel
Title: Grief on the front lines : reckoning with trauma, grief, and
humanity in modern medicine / by Rachel Jones.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2022] |
Perspectives from healthcare workers. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021038721 (print) | LCCN 2021038722 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623176402 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781623176419 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychic trauma. | Grief.
Classification: LCC RC480.5 .J662 2022 (print) | LCC RC480.5 (ebook) |
DDC 616.85/21dc23/eng/20211012
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038721
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038722