Dr. Laura Hawryluck was seized with a sense of overwhelming panic so great she couldn’t focus, couldn’t sleep. This time, the cause wasn’t the faces of the many patients she has witnessed take their last laboured breaths in the intensive care unit at Toronto Western Hospital, where she has spent the last two-and-a-half years treating waves of COVID-19 cases.
This time, it was a deadline keeping her awake. She had been asked by a colleague to edit some teaching materials. A routine task for her any other time.
But suddenly, she began to realize the toll the pandemic’s grinding workload has taken on her. “That sense of overwhelming anxiety of being asked to do one more thing was the near sense of panic that I’ve never felt before,” she said. Read more: Health workers call for radical changes to health care to treat pandemic burnout This episode made Hawryluck realize she would have to step back from some of her commitments.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but the burnout she was feeling was just too much. “I had to give up on some projects that I love doing,” she said. “But, you know, if I didn’t, I realized that I was not going to be able to get through this.” Life may be back to normal for many Canadians now that COVID-19 cases are on the decline, but the same is not true for many health care workers who are still dealing with hospital outbreaks and COVID-19 patients.