Industry advocates are encouraging healthcare leaders to take a hard look at their licensing, credentialing, and privileging applications and rewrite any questions that could perpetuate stigma around behavioral health issues. The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to reduce burnout and safeguard health professionals’ wellbeing, recently recognized 59 urgent care organizations and 75 hospitals among its WellBeing First Champions—organizations that have made application updates consistent with the foundation’s recommendations.Â
What matters most: The foundation’s namesake, Lorna Breen, MD, practiced at New York Presbyterian Hospital and became the director of an emergency department in 2008. She died by suicide on April 26, 2020, after becoming overwhelmed by the emotional toll of the COVID-19 crisis. The turning point was when she told a loved one she was afraid to seek behavioral health services because she worried it could cost her her job in medicine. According to the foundation, 400 physicians die each year by suicide with emergency medicine professionals having some of the highest risk.