We all need compassion. We are all deserving of it. 

A vital and timely book about inspirational nurses, and the bravery of patients and families, from the bestselling author of The Language of Kindness

Nurses have never been more important. We benefit from their expertise in our hospitals and beyond: in our schools, on our streets, in prisons, hospices and care homes. When we feel most alone, nurses remind us that we are not alone at all.

In The Courage to Care bestselling author Christie Watson reveals the remarkable extent of nurses’ work. A community mental-health nurse choreographs support for a man suffering from severe depression. A teen with stab wounds is treated by the critical-care team; his school nurse visits and he drops the bravado. A pregnant woman loses frightening amounts of blood following a car accident; it is a military nurse who synchronises the emergency department into immaculate order and focus.

Christie makes a further discovery: that, time and again, it is patients and their families – including her own – who show exceptional strength in the most challenging times. We are all deserving of compassion, and as we share in each other’s suffering, Christie Watson shows us how we can find courage too. The courage to care.

About the author

Christie Watson is an award-winning, bestselling writer. She has been a nurse for over twenty years. In March 2020 Christie joined the Covid-19 Emergency Nursing Register and has been working in Critical Care during the first peak of the coronavirus.

The Language of Kindness was published in 2018 and was a number one Sunday Times Bestseller. It was a Book of the Year in the Evening Standard, Guardian, New Statesman, The Sunday Times and The Times. It has been translated into 23 languages, and is currently being adapted for theatre and television.

Her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award and Waverton Good Read Award and her second novel, Where Women Are Kings, also achieved international critical acclaim.

Christie holds an honorary Doctor of Letters for her contribution to nursing and the arts and is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. She lives in South London.