The South Island and Victoria Divisions of Family Practice have partnered to form a Joint Wellness Committee dedicated to enhancing the health and wellness of our physician members. We recognize the significant demands placed on physicians, both professionally and personally, and are committed to providing a range of resources tailored to support your well-being and promote a balanced, healthy lifestyle.
Greater Victoria Physician Peer Support Program
The Greater Victoria Physician Peer Support Program offers short-term, one-on-one peer support to physicians across our region. Our trained local peer supporters are available to listen and guide their colleagues through various challenges.
What is peer support?
Peer support encourages an authentic human connection with another person who shares similar life experiences – in this case, the unique stressors and challenges faced by family physicians. Peers offer confidential, non-judgmental listening and non-clinical support with life, work, and other issues.
Peer support is distinct from therapy, mentorship where an experienced peer is providing clinical or career advice, and direct clinical care.
While peer supporters are here to listen, issues such as suicidality, substance use, mental health concerns, and personal medical advice are out of scope. However, they can connect you with appropriate services.
What are the goals of peer support?
- Create a safe space for peers to share experiences and seek emotional support
- Listen non-judgmentally, validate, and empathize with the experience of peers
- Empower peers to recognize existing strengths and resources, and build on coping strategies that work for them
- Connect peers with community resources if they need support beyond the scope of peer support
- Promote a broader sense of community and a postive, supportive workplace culture
When might someone benefit from peer support?
Peer support might be helpful for physicians who experience work or life stressors and require emotional, non-judgmental support. Examples of these scenarios might be:
- 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)
- Struggles with burnout/moral injury
- A change that has happened at work that impacts you emotionally
How does matching take place?
When a peer support request is received, program administrators will match to physician peer supports based largely on availability. Career stage and pre-existing professional connections may also play a role.
If a physician has a special demographic request such as gender, specialty, race, etc., program administrators will try to accommodate. The scope of peer support and the training provided aims to enable all peer supporters to emotionally support any colleague regardless of their demographics.
Once a match takes place, physicians will be connected with their peer supporter.
What do peer support interactions look like?
Peer support is short-term, emotional, non-clinical support. It is not therapy, clinical advice, or mentorship.
The conversation modality (in-person, virtual, or by phone) will be mutually decided between the peer supporter and the referred physician. Generally, peer support will be short-term in nature (1-3 conversations). If the referred physician requires support beyond a few conversations, the peer supporter will offer an appropriate referral.
Peer support can be very useful if you are feeling upset about an adverse patient event or a tough clinical case, but a clinical discussion is out of scope for a peer supporter. If you want to talk about your case and mention clinical aspects, that’s okay. Your peer supporter can give you the space to talk about it and will focus on the emotional pieces of your experience. If you need clinical input on a patient, the RACE line is a great place to start.
As this is a pilot program, a short evaluation will be sent at the conclusion of peer support interactions.
Get Involved!
Want to make a meaningful impact on your colleagues’ lives and develop your communication skills? Consider training as a peer supporter. The next remunerated one-day training session will be held in November 2024. We are seeking Greater Victoria physicians interested in joining our peer support team.
For more information, contact peersupport@southislandmsa.ca.
Apps
- HeadSpace – Meditation and mindfulness for any mind, any mood, and any goal. Learn about the benefits of meditation, how to improve your sleep, tips to relieve stress, and many more.
- Calm – Choose from a selection of goals to help improve sleep quality, reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus and overall self-development.
- MindShift – This app uses scientifically proven strategies based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help you learn how to relax, develop more effective ways of thinking, and use active steps to take charge of your anxiety.
Podcasts
- Listen to the CMA podcast Sound Mind and browse a variety of topics in physician wellness and medical culture, hosted by Psychiatrist and wellness expert, Dr. Caroline Gérin-Lajoie.
- The Making Mama Well podcast with Dr. Pip Houghton discusses maternal mental health and the “normal hard stuff” that all newly parenting families experience.
- Boundaries in health care: Navigating personal and professional distance on The Podcast with Kevin MD.
- The Power of No: Learning to Establish Boundaries as a Physician on Heartline with Dr. Andrea Austin.
