Taking Care of Each Other During COVID-19 – Peer Support For health care providers

Peer support is highly desirable to health care providers experiencing work difficulties, but that such support is commonly not available.

How will you seek and provide support to peers?

Those who have had good peer support say it is essential to their career in medicine.

1. HCP’s want to talk to peers about work related stressors, because often only peers understand the depth of responsibility we carry in our work. This is why I find it so rewarding to have a husband who is also a surgeon, and why many other female doctors have spouses who are also physicians.

2. Peer support is easily available to us all, but we have to be intentional about creating it for ourselves, and for each other.

3. Peer support requires us to be willing to be vulnerable. This is the key that opens the door.

4. We can’t ever fully appreciate the value of the support we offer to our colleagues. One brief conversation can be literally lifesaving to the person who receives our support.

5. We already have the necessary skills to provide excellent peer support. It takes suspending judgement, generous listening, acknowledging, validating, normalizing, and re-framing. 

6. Providing peer support is easy when you realize it’s not your job to fix or rescue your colleague. Although they may be suffering, they aren’t broken. Your role is just to be with them right where they are.

7. When we support each other, it is not as doctors or ______, but as human beings.

8. One of the ways we transform difficult experiences is to use our experience to make the world a better place for someone else.

Here is what I am doing now to ensure I, and my team, can manage through this unprecedented time at work.

1. I have identified a group of colleagues who I can go to for peer support. I know them to be safe for me. Safety is essential. It requires someone who has the emotional capacity for the conversation, and the ability to put their own reactions in the parking lot. If the peer is triggered by your story, they can’t support you.

2. I ask for what I need. 

3. I ask people how they are doing, and really listen. 

4. I have to be a good friend to myself too. This is sometimes hard for us as caregivers. I am trying to practice self-care everyday. This is actually a very difficult thing for me to prioritize, but I know that if I can go outside, practice yoga (now online) or meditate for ten minutes, my day feels entirely different.

5. I contribute what I have, instead of waiting to be perfect first. I might not be the best person for the job, but what if that person doesn’t come along? The time to reach out or act is now.

Take care of your precious selves, and those around you. We can get through this together

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Original article authored by Tandi Wilkinson MD CCFP-EM, paraphrased and edited by Gina Maccarone, MD, CCFP-EM