a matter of life or death

Initial panic was mild, but big changes soon followed. Day after day, wards were cleared to make room for COVID patients. Things were getting worse by the day. For the first time in my nursing career, I felt scared. As a palliative care nurse, Kelly Critcher's job is to face death squarely in the eye—to save the patient while the battle can still be won, and to face the end of life with compassion and kindness when it can't. In early 2020, everything changed for nurses on the front lines of the NHS. Kelly worked on COVID wards and the high-dependency care unit, and spent the height of the coronavirus crisis at Northwick Park Hospital—perhaps the UK's hardest-hit hospital. She, and many like her, fought tirelessly in a critical care unit at breaking point, delivering bad news and fighting the good fight, day after day, throughout the gravest test our health service has faced since its inception. Kelly's story weaves together her raw, emotional memoir from the COVID front line with broader reflections on the realities of a life spent caught between her struggle to save her patients' lives and helping them face death with courage and compassion. This book brings together the horror of the past 12 months and the scars they will leave, making it relevant to our times.