There is good news on the physician well-being front: Leaders at healthcare organizations large and small are prioritizing peer support programs to head off the effects of adverse events and proactively promote general mental health. Once regarded as merely nice to have, such efforts are now often seen as indispensable.
But chief wellness officers (CWOs) and other peer support program champions are also running into an unexpected hurdle.
“We’re seeing more and more health systems standing up peer support programs—that’s great—but many of them are struggling in one vital area: utilization,” said Heather Farley, MD, MCHDS, the AMA’s group vice president of professional satisfaction and practice sustainability.
“They build it, but no one comes. And that can be due to a lingering culture of stoicism, stigma around seeking help, concerns about confidentiality, or simply not knowing when or how to access support,” Dr. Farley said. “So you can't just stand up a program. That’s not enough. You actually have to shift the culture in your organization and create the conditions that make people feel safe using it.”
The AMA is helping healthcare organizations navigate this process with the AMA Peer Support Workshop, a two-day, in-person experience that provides practical tools and proven strategies to help you launch or reinvigorate your peer support program. The workshop is intended for:
- Healthcare executive leaders.
- Well-being, patient safety and quality leaders.
- Peer support program directors or emerging program champions.
- Clinical managers, educators and risk-management leaders.
“A lot of what we're covering in the course is: How do you shift culture from shame-and-blame to self-compassion, mutual support and normalization of help seeking?” Dr. Farley said. “It also gets into the meat and potatoes of building a peer support program, beginning with: How do you recruit and train your peer supporters? How do you evaluate and maximize your effectiveness? How do you get buy-in for the resources? And how do you structure your program so that it’s hardwired to increase utilization?”
The workshop will be held Oct. 28–29 at the AMA headquarters in Chicago. Learn more and register now.
The event reflects the AMA’s role as the leader in physician well-being, providing organizational solutions that help physicians and health systems optimize practice efficiency, reduce burnout, and rediscover the Joy in Medicine®.
Learn from those who’ve done it
Dr. Farley is one of the workshop’s featured speakers. Her work in the realm of peer support is informed by her own experience following an adverse event about 15 years ago.
“That was at a time when it was still absolutely not OK to talk about struggling after adverse events,” she said, noting that lots of events qualify as adverse: a patient’s unexpected death, the injury or an illness of a coworker, a medication error, workplace violence or just witnessing a death for the first time.
"There were no peer support programs and it was incredibly isolating, incredibly shame-inducing. It’s really tough to do your normal job while you’re carrying all of this added weight,” she said.
What physicians and health professionals want and need in the immediate aftermath of some of these adverse events, she said, is a peer—someone who gets it.
“Counselors or therapists are a great resource and certainly play an important support role, but they generally will not have gone through what you have,” she said. “Care team members really value the opportunity to share their experience with a peer, who can serve as a friendly, confidential ear and help you process the difficult emotions that are an inevitable part of adverse events for many people.”
With the backing of her employer, Dr. Farley went on to create one of the first peer support programs in the country.
“I really did not want my colleagues to go through what I went through,” she said.
Day 1: Tackling top-line issues
The other featured speakers at the workshop are:
- Katie Godfrey, PhD, director of the Center for WorkLife Wellbeing at ChristianaCare.
- Christine McGuire-Chloros, program manager of Care for the Caregiver at ChristianaCare.
- Alicia Pilarski, DO, senior director of organizational well-being at the AMA.
- Susan D. Scott, PhD, RN, nurse-scientist and adjunct professor at University of Missouri Health Care.
“What I love about what we’ve put together is that it’s built on decades of experience in this realm,” Dr. Farley said. “So it's not just an academic exercise. We’re pulling together experts who have done this in multiple different health systems.”
Together, the speakers will tackle the most vital topics around building and optimizing a peer support workshop. Sessions on day one will cover these areas.
Foundations of peer support. “These are the building blocks of a successful program,” Dr. Farley said.
Stakeholder engagement and organizational alignment. “If you stand up a peer support program in isolation, its effectiveness is going to be limited. You’re trying to shift culture throughout your organization, and that really does require broad stakeholder engagement. To do this well, you’re going to want to get buy-in from, for example, your risk management team, your quality and safety teams, and your clinical and operational leaders.”
Designing a scalable peer support program. “Oftentimes, systems will start with one population or one department, such as just physicians or the department of surgery. Here we look at: Do you pilot first or do you do a broad, full-scale implementation? And if you choose to pilot first, how do you then strategically scale across your organization?”
Building a peer support team. “There are pitfalls around knowing the right number and proportion of peer supporters that you need to support your target population. Also, what skills should you look for in a peer supporter? And then how do you skill them up over time?”
Program measurement and evaluation. “A huge issue that people run into is how to track utilization, because it's such a confidential thing—they will get pushback from their risk management or legal teams. So how can you track your utilization and effectiveness while maintaining confidentiality?”
Day one will also feature two breakout sessions.
Day 2: Expanding and adapting
Peer support is an enterprise-wide endeavor, Dr. Farley noted. “Physicians don't practice in isolation. We practice as part of a broader care team and the well-being of the entire team is interconnected. And this is one of the reasons why this peer support workshop is not just for physicians.”
Communication, promotion and program visibility. “How do you increase awareness of the resource and decrease barriers to help seeking?”
Day two will also include two breakout session options.
Why now is the time to do it
There are now external incentives for healthcare organizations to create a peer support program.
For starters, there is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) new Patient Safety Structural Measure, which now includes care-for-the-caregiver support after adverse events as part of its patient-safety framework.
Also, support is one of the six domains of the AMA Joy in Medicine Recognition Program, which was developed by the AMA to empower health systems to reduce burnout and build well-being so that physicians—and their patients—thrive.
In addition, beyond the two in-person days in October, the AMA Peer Support Workshop includes access to three postworkshop virtual learning sessions to help you move from design to successful execution.
"Expert faculty will support you throughout your implementation,” Dr. Farley said.
The workshop is just one part of the AMA Career Advancement Collective, a powerful suite of educational programs and training to help physicians develop and advance at every stage of their career.
Upcoming Career Advancement Collective events include the:
- AMA Independent Practice Accelerator Workshop, Sept. 11–12.
- American Conference on Physician Health®, Oct. 14–16, 2027.
Learn more and register for one of these career-shaping events now.
