Top E.R. Doctor Who Treated Virus Patients Dies by Suicide
Dr. Lorna Breen
“She
tried to do her job, and it killed her,” said the father of Dr. Lorna M. Breen,
who worked at a Manhattan hospital hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.
A
top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated many coronavirus patients died by suicide on Sunday,
her father and the police said.
Dr.
Lorna M. Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at
NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, died in Charlottesville, Va., where she was
staying with family, her father said in an interview.
Tyler
Hawn, a spokesman for the Charlottesville Police Department, said in an email
that officers on Sunday responded to a call seeking medical assistance.
“The
victim was taken to U.V.A. Hospital for treatment, but later succumbed to
self-inflicted injuries,” Mr. Hawn said.
“She tried to do her job, and it killed
her,” he said.
The
elder Dr. Breen said his daughter had contracted the coronavirus but had gone
back to work after recuperating for about a week and a half. The hospital sent
her home again, before her family intervened to bring her to Charlottesville,
he said..
Dr.
Breen, 49, did not have a history of mental illness, her father said. But he
said that when he last spoke with her, she seemed detached, and he could tell
something was wrong. She had described to him an onslaught of patients who were
dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances.
“She was truly in the trenches of the
front line,” he said.
He
added: “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty
just as much as anyone else who has died.”
In
a statement, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia used that language to describe her.
“Dr. Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the
challenging front lines of the emergency department,” the statement said. “Our
focus today is to provide support to her family, friends and colleagues as they
cope with this news during what is already an extraordinarily difficult time.”
Dr.
Angela Mills, head of emergency medical services for several
NewYork-Presbyterian campuses, including Allen, sent an email to hospital
staffers on Sunday night informing them of Dr. Breen’s death. The email, which
was reviewed by The New York Times, did not mention a cause of death. Dr.
Mills, who could not be reached for comment, said in the email that the
hospital was deferring to the family’s request for privacy.
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As of April 7, there had been 59 patient deaths at Allen hospital,
according to an internal document.Credit...Gregg
Vigliotti for The New York Times
Aside
from work, Dr. Breen filled her time with friends, hobbies and sports, friends
said. She was an avid member of a New York ski club and traveled regularly out
west to ski and snowboard. She was also a deeply religious Christian who
volunteered at a home for older people once a week, friends said. Once a year,
she threw a large party on the roof deck of her Manhattan home.
She was very close with her sisters and
mother, who lived in Virginia.
One
colleague said he had spent dozens of hours talking to Dr. Breen not only about
medicine but about their lives and the hobbies she enjoyed, which also included
salsa dancing. She was a lively presence, outgoing and extroverted, at work
events, the colleague said.
NewYork-Presbyterian
Allen is a 200-bed hospital at the northern tip of Manhattan that at times had
as many as 170 patients with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
As of April 7, there had been 59 patient deaths at the hospital, according to
an internal document.
Dr.
Lawrence A. Melniker, the vice chair for quality care at the
NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, said that Dr. Breen was a
well-respected and well-liked doctor in the NewYork-Presbyterian system, a
network of hospitals that includes the Columbia University Irving Medical
Center and the Weill Cornell Medical Center.
“You don’t get to a position like that
at Allen without being very talented,” he said.
Dr.
Melniker said the coronavirus had presented unusual mental health challenges
for emergency physicians throughout New York, the epicenter of the crisis in
the United States.
Source: New York
Times
