Every night at 7 p.m., New Yorkers applaud for health care professionals who are treating those afflicted with COVID-19 as well as other essential front line workers who cannot remain home.
Tonight, I suspect there will be many New Yorkers who will applaud for Dr. Lorna Breen. She was the emergency room medical director at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital which is situated on the northern tip of Manhattan. Sadly, Dr. Breen took her own life while visiting her family in Charlottesville, Virginia. She was 49.
Dr. Breen had been treating COVID-19 patients before becoming afflicted herself. She briefly returned to work before her family urged her to travel to Virginia.
As her father Phillip Breen, also a doctor, put it, “She tried to do her job, and it killed her.”
The elder Breen indicated his daughter did not have a history of mental illness, but noted a change in her demeanor after seeing numerous patients who had died before they could be treated.
While most doctors and health care workers will not abruptly end their lives there is no doubt that a critical mass will experience PTSD. There are those who will argue that COVID-19 cannot be compared to war. Yet with the sheer amount of death associated with COVID-19, I am sure the experiences of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals have similar experiences to medical personnel who have treated our soldiers in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
COVID-19 has been a profoundly life changing experience for all of us. For doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who have had to treat COVID-19 patients it is infinitely more so because of the loss of life they could not prevent and the risk of contracting COVID-19 themselves. Some health care professionals will be less able to cope with these conditions than others. Simply put, Dr. Breen will not be the last health care worker who will take their life as a result of what they experienced.
As Dr. Breen's father put it, “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”
We New Yorkers shall see to her praise tonight. R.I.P.
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