FORT CARSON, Co.  –   Evans Army Community Hospital’s Department of Ministry and Pastoral Care hosted its first ever Peer Support Program training for staff members Oct. 5.

The Peer Support Program, or PSP, is designed to provide a support network for clinical staff who regularly manage significant emotional stress due to involvement in an adverse event, caring for trauma victims, negative patient outcomes, or other emotional events.

“Peer support is another layer of care in addition to Behavioral Health, Chaplains, Marriage and Family Life Counselors, or programs like Military One Source,” said Chaplain (Maj.) Danny Crosby, Chief, EACH Department of Ministry and Pastoral Care. “Medical providers of all types need support, especially when they have experienced some sort of negative outcome or are facing issues they need advice with.”

A team from Brooke Army Medical Center, Texas, led by Lt. Col. (Dr.) Erin Keyser, conducted the PSP training for 51 EACH healthcare providers across diverse healthcare specialties.

“The feedback was overwhelmingly positive,” said Crosby. “The BAMC training team said the morning group was one of the best they have ever trained regarding their openness and interaction. Both of our groups displayed a hunger to learn and a desire to help their peers.”

Crosby says that a key benefit of the program is that providers gain a listening ear from someone who truly understands what they are going through, as well as professional and personal advice from like-minded and similarly-trained peers.

According to a recent study conducted by Dr Keyser and several of her colleagues, Peer support has been shown to mitigate the fear, sadness, and isolation that too often accompany involvement in adverse and other stressful events, so clinicians know they are not alone. In an observational study of what helps physicians following an adverse event, overwhelmingly, talking to a colleague was ranked highest.

Training participants expressed their appreciation for the lessons learned from the training and a more formalized process for seeking out support from their peers.

Healthcare is inherently risky, and despite our best efforts, there will be outcomes that are not as we predicted and/or hoped,” said Col. (Dr.) David Wolken, EACH deputy commander for clinical services. “These can be due to natural progression of the disease or due to the complexity of healthcare at the system, team and/or provider level.

It is commonplace for healthcare professionals to place a higher burden of a patient’s outcome on their actions alone, thus feeling inadequate, isolated, and/or questioning their chosen profession, according to Wolken.

“This has been proven to lead to a high level of stress, burn out and early departure from the profession,” Wolken continued. “A profession that is in high demand and quite frankly requires professionals with such compassion and empathy. This program allows true peers to be available to listen, mentor, and/or coach them thru the ‘what now’ and ‘what next,’ and most importantly, to ensure their needs as a person are addressed. This is truly a program that models, ‘place the oxygen mask on yourself before you place it on someone else.”

Jackie Samuel, Chief of the EACH Patient- and Family-Centered Care Program and Patient Advocate, participated in the training and says the PSP offered him a new perspective on the unique way every individual reacts to patient encounters.

“This training expanded my expectation that there are always multiple vantage points to every encounter,” Samuel said. “We can all learn from other vantage points, and we can sit with people from their vantage point without losing our own viewpoint. This session reminded me that how I see is not the only way something is seen.”

Rebecca Briar, a Clinical Pharmacist with the EACH Department of Pharmacy, says that the training helped to clearly define a process to assist other medical staff members that may be suffering after a difficult patient case.

“It is great to have a program moving forward to be able to assist our coworkers in their times of struggles,” Briar said. “As we come alongside our peers, we don’t leave anyone struggling as if they are out there alone. We are able to better support each other and together move forward to continue exceptional, quality care for our patients while also focusing on self-care so we don’t burn out.”

While this was the first PSP training at EACH, the program is meant to be offered twice a year, with a goal to train as many providers as possible.