Taking Care of our Healers

Last year, a talented and dynamic physician, Dr. Lorna Breen, died by suicide after serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Breen’s story highlighted a deeply troubling problem in our medical community: alarming rates of stress, burnout, and suicide among health care professionals.

Dr. Lorna Breen, the physician the bill is named after. (Source: Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation)

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the issue, health care professionals have long experienced high levels of stress and burnout. While helping their patients fight for their lives, many health care professionals have been coping with their own trauma of losing patients and colleagues and fear for their own health and safety. In my conversations with frontline healthcare workers over the past year, I’ve seen that this crisis will continue to have a significant impact on the lives of healthcare professionals for a very long time. As we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the healers who’ve been caring for everyone else will continue to feel the effects of this trauma yet face stigma in seeking treatment.

That’s why I’ve reintroduced the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act. This comprehensive, bipartisan legislation would reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, and mental and behavioral health conditions among health care professionals. It also supports training to prevent suicide and burnout for health professionals and increases awareness about suicide and mental health concerns among health care professionals.

Specifically, the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act:
• Establishes grants for training health profession students, residents, or health care professionals in evidence-informed strategies to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders. The grants would also help improve health care professionals’ well-being and job satisfaction.

• Seeks to identify and disseminate evidence-informed best practices for reducing and preventing suicide and burnout among health care professionals, training health care professionals in, appropriate strategies, and promoting their mental and behavioral health and job satisfaction.

• Establishes a national evidence-based education and awareness campaign targeting health care professionals to encourage them to seek support and treatment for mental and behavioral health concerns.

• Establishes grants for employee education, peer-support programming, and mental and behavioral health treatment; health care providers in current or former COVID-19 hotspots will be prioritized.

• Establishes a comprehensive study on health care professional mental and behavioral health and burnout, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on such professionals’ health.

I’m glad to see the COVID-19 relief bill making its way through Congress right now includes several provisions modeled after the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act that provides significant funding to address the mental health needs of health care professionals.

It’s so important for Congress to pass this bipartisan legislation so we can meaningfully change how our health care industry approaches mental health and set up a more reliable infrastructure and culture for health care professionals to count on in the years to come.

Sincerely,