Dr. Herridge is committed to evaluating and improving long-term patient and family caregiver outcomes after critical illness. Since 1997, her group has completed three cohort studies: 5-year outcomes in survivors of ARDS (co-PI Dr. Angela Cheung); 1-year outcomes in survivors of SARS (co-PI Dr. Catherine Tansey); 2-year outcomes in patients after 7 days of mechanical ventilation and their family caregivers (RECOVER Program Phase I co-PI Dr. Jill Cameron). Currently, Dr. Herridge is co-leading (with Dr. Angela Cheung) the CIHR-funded CANCOV Program (Prospective multi-centre 2-year Cohort Study of COVID-19 patients and caregivers). She is Director of the RECOVER Clinical and Research Program for patient-and family-centered follow-up care after critical illness, conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Critical Care Trials group (CCCTG). She also serves as the Clinical Director of the Grace RECOVER Program for Chronic Critical Illness, a novel 20-bed unit newly created during COVID-19 to improve the continuum of care after critical illness and to bring multidimensional patient-and family-centered care to recovery after prolonged mechanical ventilation.
Areas of academic focus
Long-term outcomes after acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), SARS and prolonged mechanical ventilation; RECOVER Program: Patient- and family-centered follow-up care after critical illness; CANCOV Program.
Dr. Margaret Herridge is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and a Senior Scientist in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. She is the Director of the RECOVER Program/ RECOVER Program for Chronic Critical Illness at the Toronto Grace Health Centre and co-lead (with Dr. Angela Cheung) of CANCOV (Canadian multi-centre 5-year follow-up of patients/caregivers after COVID-19).
She obtained her MSc and MD from Queen’s University in Kingston, completed her clinical training in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Toronto and obtained her MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health concurrent with a clinical research fellowship at the Channing Laboratory. She is an international expert on ICU outcomes and has published close to 250 publications and book chapters on patient and family outcomes after critical illness. She has been the co-editor of the first two international textbooks on outcomes after critical illness: Textbook of Post-ICU Medicine: The Legacy of Critical Illness (2014, with co-editors Robert Stevens (US) and Nick Hart (UK)) (recent translation into Chinese 2018) and Textbook of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (2019, with co-editors Élie Azoulay (France) and Jean-Charles Preiser (Belgium)). Most recently, she co-chaired the WHO ‘Expanding our Understanding of the Post COVID-19 Condition’ Working Group/publication and served as a content expert for the COVID-19 Ontario Provincial Scientific Round Table including the published brief on the Post COVID-19 condition. She has published 2 editorials and 4 manuscripts in the New England Journal of Medicine including: one- and five- year outcomes after ARDS; one-year outcomes in family caregivers after prolonged mechanical ventilation and a recent review article (March 2023) with Dr. Élie Azoulay on Outcomes after Critical Illness. She is a frequent international speaker on outcomes after critical illness.
Selected Honours and Awards
- 2015 Dr. F. Marguerite Hill Lecturer (awarded to a woman in medicine who has made a considerable impact at an international level with demonstrable benefit to the wellbeing of patients and society at large)
- 2016 Honorary Member, European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (awarded for outstanding contribution to the international field of Intensive Care Medicine)
- 2017 Inaugural Excellence in Research Faculty Award, Division of Respirology (for sustained excellence in research)
- 2018 Critical Care Lifetime Achievement Award, American Thoracic Society (for a career devoted to research and teaching of the science and practice of Critical Care Medicine and outstanding service to the Assembly on Critical Care)
- 2019 Eaton Scholar Researcher of the Year (Clinical) Award, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto (for outstanding leadership and contributions to research)
- 2020 Deborah Cook Mentorship Award, Canadian Critical Care Trials Group
- 2021 Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (in recognition of ICU outcomes work
- 2022 CIHR-Canadian Critical Care Society Distinguished Lecturer Award in Critical Care Sciences
- 2022 Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Critical Illness Outcomes and the Recovery Continuum
- Professor, Department Medicine, University of Toronto
- Director of the RECOVER Program (REhabilitation and reCOVERy for patients and families after critical illness)
- Clinical Director, Grace RECOVER Program for Chronic Critical Illness