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An emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital who treated many coronavirus patients died Sunday of suicide, his father and police said.
Dr. Lorna M. Breen, medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, died in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she was staying with her family, her father said in an interview.
Tyler Hawn, a spokesman for the Charlottesville Police Department, said in an email that officers responded Sunday to a call for medical assistance.
“The victim was taken to U.V.A. Hospital for treatment, but then succumbed to self-inflicted injuries,” said Hawn.
Dr. Breen’s father, Dr. Philip C. Breen, said she described devastating scenes of the cost the coronavirus caused in patients.
“She tried to do her job, and that killed her,” he said.
Old Dr. Breen said that his daughter had contracted the coronavirus but had returned to work after recovering for about a week and a half. The hospital sent her home again, before her family intervened to take her to Charlottesville, she said.
Dr. Breen, 49, had no history of mental illness, her father said. But he said the last time he spoke to her, she seemed distant, and he could tell that something was wrong. She had described to him an avalanche of patients dying before they could be removed from ambulances.
“She was really in the trenches of the front line,” he said.
She added: “Make sure she is praised as a heroine, because she was. She is a victim as much as anyone else who has died.”
In a statement, NewYork-Presbyterian / Columbia used that language to describe it. “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 support your family, friends and colleagues as they face up to this news during what is already an extraordinarily difficult time. “
Dr. Angela Mills, chief of emergency medical services for several New York-Presbyterian campuses, including Allen, e-mailed hospital employees 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 the family’s privacy request.
“A death presents us with many questions that we may not be able to answer,” the email said.
In addition to work, Dr. Breen filled her time with friends, hobbies, and sports, her friends said. He was an avid member of a New York ski club and regularly traveled west to ski and snowboard. She was also a deeply religious Christian who volunteered at a nursing home once a week, her friends said. Once a year, he had a big party on the terrace of his Manhattan home.
She was very close to her sisters and mother, who lived in Virginia.
A colleague said she had spent dozens of hours talking to Dr. Breen not only about medicine but also about their lives and the hobbies she enjoyed, which also included dancing salsa. He was a live, outgoing and outgoing presence at work events, the colleague said.
NewYork-Presbyterian Allen is a 200-bed hospital in the northern tip of Manhattan that sometimes had up to 170 patients with Covid-19, the disease 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, vice president of quality care at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, said Dr. Breen was a well-respected and beloved physician in the NewYork-Presbyterian system, a network of hospitals that includes the Center Columbia University Irving Physician and Weill Cornell Medical Center.
“You don’t get to a position like that in Allen without being very talented,” he said.
Dr. Melniker said that the coronavirus had presented unusual mental health challenges for emergency physicians across New York, the epicenter of the crisis in the United States.
Doctors are used to responding to all kinds of creepy tragedies, he said. But they rarely have to worry about getting sick themselves or infecting colleagues, friends, and family.
And they rarely have to treat their own coworkers.
Another colleague said that Dr. Breen was always looking for others, making sure that his doctors had protective gear or whatever else they needed. Even when he was at home recovering from Covid-19, he texted his co-workers to check in and see how they were doing, the colleague said.
[ThinkingaboutsuicideontheNationalLifelineforsuicidepreventionat1-800-273-8255(TALK)[IfyouarehavingthoughtsofsuicidecalltheNationalSuicidePreventionLifelineat1-800-273-8255(TALK)orgoto[SiestápensandoensuicidarsellamealaLíneadevidanacionalparalaprevencióndelsuicidioal1-800-273-8255(TALK)ovayaa[IfyouarehavingthoughtsofsuicidecalltheNationalSuicidePreventionLifelineat1-800-273-8255(TALK)orgotoSpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Here it is what you can do when a loved one is severely depressed]
Benjamin Weiser and Joseph Goldstein contributed reports.
