Physicians face unique challenges. Physicians experience stress, vulnerability and fear as normal emotional responses to painful experiences such as patient complaints, adverse events, workplace conflict and other difficulties.
Physicians can benefit from sharing their challenging experiences with peers who may have experienced similar situations and can truly understand. Support from colleagues can have a positive impact on wellbeing and workplace experiences.
The Peer Support Initiative offers confidential, non-clinical, support to physician colleagues by physician Peer Supporters in a 1:1 setting.
Our Peer Supporters have undergone training by Dr. Jo Shapiro (Associate Professor with Harvard Medical School and founder of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Centre for Professionalism and Peer Support) and the BC Physician Health Program.
How to access support
Click here to make a request for peer support for yourself or for a colleague.
Once you’ve reached out, a Peer Supporter will connect with you or your colleague within 2-3 days to schedule a conversation.
If you are requesting peer support for a colleague, reach out to them first and seek their consent to pass their name and contact information over to our Peer Support Initiative.
Reasons for seeking peer support may include: dealing with a patient/college complaint, workplace interpersonal conflict or adverse clinical event, managing work-life balance, burnout/moral injury, experiences of discrimination in the workplace, or any other situation where you feel it would be helpful.
Additional Resource for BIPOC physicians
The Physician Health Program has also launched a BIPOC Physician Peer Support Group for physicians who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC). It provides a confidential space to empower each other by sharing lived experience and support. The sessions are held on Mondays from 7:15pm – 8:30pm with topics ranging from intergenerational resilience, workplace conflict and more.
This Initiative is available to actively practicing physicians in Vancouver. If you are a resident seeking peer support, please check out the UBC Peer Support Program.
Studies have shown that peer support for physicians can be effective in contributing to a culture where physicians feel more comfortable seeking and offering help. People who use peer support show improved coping and self-management skills, have stronger social networks, reduced isolation, and a reduced need for intensive services.
Peer support offers a safe way for clinicians to talk about their experience and emotions with someone who has empathy from having \”been there\”. The focus of peer support is not to fix the problem. Instead, we offer short-term support through non-judgmental listening, we empower you to recognize your existing strengths and resources, and we connect you to community resources if needed. Peer support is essentially psychological first aid.
Peer support is not therapy, mentorship from an experienced peer, or direct clinical care.
Peer support might be helpful for physicians who experience work or life stressors and require emotional, non-judgmental support. Examples of this might include:
Adverse clinical event (including but not limited to an adverse patient outcome)
Patient or college complaint
Interpersonal/relational conflict with a patient or colleague
Acute life stressor which impacts career (e.g. birth of a new child or bereavement)
Experience(s) of discrimination or alienation/othering at work from patients, colleagues or staff
Struggles with burnout/moral injury
A change that has happened at work that impacts you emotionally
Yes! First, reach out to your colleague to seek their consent to pass their name and contact information to our peer support program. Then, please submit this form, selecting that you are referring a colleague. Our administration will reach out to your colleague and connect them with a Peer Supporter.
Following your request for peer support we will reach out to you to confirm your request. Then, we will match you to a Peer Supporter who will reach out to you within 2-3 days to schedule a conversation.
Peer support conversations occur through the modality of your choice – in person, phone call, or Zoom. The duration of a conversation will vary based on your needs – generally 15-45 minutes. Peer support relationships are short term, which means that you will likely have one to three conversations with your peer supporter.
Confidentiality is an integral part of our program. Only the peer support program administrator and your peer supporter has access to your name and contact information for the purpose of facilitating a match and contacting you. Peer supporters will not be taking written notes during your conversation.
There are rare cases where confidentiality must be broken, such as when a physician is at risk of harming themselves or others, or if a peer supporter has a direct reason to believe that someone is at risk for unsafe behaviour. These are the same reasons you might have to break confidentiality in your everyday clinical practice as a physician. If in the rare case that this situation arises, your peer supporter would make you aware of the situation and support a collaborative approach to addressing the concern.
