A Wave of Heart Disease Among Healthcare Workers?

There has always been a lot of heart in the practice of medicine – literally and figuratively. Typically, the focus is on the beating heart of the patient. But has the pandemic, unlike any challenge to the medical profession before, impacted the hearts of front-line healthcare workers themselves? Medicine is “a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.” These words of Sir William Osler, a founding figure of modern medicine, were a warning as much as a motivation. A contemporary of Osler, Dr. Maude Abbott, a cardiac pathologist, was one of Canada’s earliest women in medicine. Her calling was challenged by refusal of entry to medical school. (She was barred from entrance to McGill’s medical program due to her gender. Bishop’s College graduate her in 1894.) But she was driven to be a doctor.