A Matter of Life and Death: Courage, compassion and the fight against coronavirus - a palliative care nurse's story

by Kelly Critcher

It was a low-level panic at first, but very quickly there were big changes taking place. Day by day, wards were being cleared to make way for Covid-positive patients. Things were getting worse by the day. For the first time in my nursing career, I felt scared.

As a palliative care nurse, it is Kelly Critcher's job to look death in the eye - to save a patient while the fight can still be won, and confront life's end with grace and kindness when it can't.

In early 2020, everything changed for nurses on the NHS front line. Working on Covid wards and the High Dependency Unit, Kelly spent the height of the coronavirus crisis at Northwick Park hospital - perhaps the UK hospital most deeply ravaged by the illness.

She, and many others like her, battled tirelessly in a critical care unit pushed to breaking point, delivering the bad news and fighting the good fight, day-in, day-out, throughout the gravest test our health service has faced since its inception.

Kelly's story weaves together her raw, emotional diaries from the COVID frontline with a broader reflection on the truths about a life spent caught between battling for her patients' lives and helping them face down death with courage and compassion. Bringing together the enormity of the last twelve months - and the scars it will leave - this is a book for our times.

Genres: Medical

305 pages, Paperback

Published April 29, 2021

Reviews

[Helen Stead · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly harrowing, emotional diary, showing what the NHS staff had to deal with, and are still coping with. I felt exhausted reading it over two nights, goodness knows how the staff felt.

[Shelbycat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting look at the covid crisis through the eyes of a palliative care team. I really found the quotes from team members added an extra dimension to this book.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about life on the front line of nursing! The author tells of how she came to be a nurse, and of her progression through various nursing roles, to her current position in palliative care. This takes up the first two-thirds or so of the book and then the second part describes how Covid appears and starts to overwhelm the health service. It gives a real insight into the pressures the health service was under (and still is at the time of writing). I now have a better understanding of what burn-out and extreme fatigue means! As Covid was taking hold, the medical profession was feeling helpless - they try to save lives but people were coming in and dying. It was devastating but Kelly shows such dedication and compassion. This should be required reading for everyone.

[Shamini · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a book from the point of view of a nurse who has worked before and after the pandemic. Kelly explains how she wants to be a nurse and what kind of obstacles she has faced to overcome and find joy in her work. Before the pandemic, she loves to assist her patients (especially the dying ones) to be with their loved ones (to spend their limited time with their families and friends).

[Rona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started my training after the second wave of covid and this really showed the state that covid had put the NHS into

[Bella-Mae Stapleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5