Why do doctors seek peer support? A qualitative interview study

OBJECTIVES: To understand how doctors reflect on when and why they seek help from an organised peer-support service. DESIGN: Data were collected through audiotaped, qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analysed with systematic text condensation. SETTING: A peer-support service accessible to all doctors in Norway. PARTICIPANTS: Thirteen doctors were interviewed after attending a counselling service in fall 2018. They were selected to represent variation in gender, demographics, and medical specialty. Doctors were excluded if the interview could not be held within 10 days after they had accessed peer support. RESULTS: The doctors’ perspectives and experiences of when and why they seek support and their expectations of the help they would receive are presented, and barriers to and facilitators of seeking support are discussed. Three categories of help-seeking behaviour were identified: (1) ‘Concerned—looking for advice’ describing help seeking in a strenuous situation with need for guidance; (2) ‘Fear of not coping any longer’ describing help seeking when struggling due to unreasonable stress and/or conflict in their lives; and (3) ‘Looking for a way back or out’ describing help seeking when out of work. Expectations to the help they would receive varied widely. Motivations for seeking help had more to do with factors enabling or restricting help-seeking than with the severity of symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Many different situations lead doctors to seek peer support, and they have various expectations of the service as well as diverse needs, motivations and constraints to seeking peer support. Further research is warranted to investigate the impact of peer support and how to tailor the service to best suit doctors’ specific needs.