Frank Gabrin, DO, Medical Economics contributor, dies of coronavirus

Frank Gabrin, DO, an emergency medicine physician who was featured on the cover of Medical Economics in 2012. He died last week from COVID-19. He was 60.

Gabrin was featured Sunday on the Today Show with Willie Geist as a "life well lived".

According to the Today Show, Gabrin was an emergency room physician at East Orange General Hospital in New Jersey, and had been treating patients with COVID-19. After starting to display symptoms last week, Gabrin apparently had difficulty breathing last Tuesday. While Gabrin's husband called 911, Gabrin passed away before help could arrive, according to the Today Show.

Gabrin was featured on the cover of the May 25, 2012 issue of Medical Economics and was the author of the cover story, titled "The Heart of Care." In the story, Gabrin explains how he survived testicular cancer and how it changed his outlook on his practice and how he relates to patients.

"For patients to feel our care, we must be willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy our own need to answer the cry of someone hurting or in need of companionship," Gabrin wrote. "We must reconnect with our original, pure, and uncorrupted desire to help others. Real caregiving is not in the fixing, but in acknowledging the depth and reality of the human condition. Our ability to truly give care comes from knowing that, when our time comes, someone will be there to lament and grieve with us. As I learned from my own experience with my surgeon, none of us wants to, or can, go it alone."

Medical Economics also recorded a five-minute video with Gabrin, that can be found here.