When Molly Tolins, MD, created the Peer Outreach Support Team (POST) program in 2019, she couldn’t have known how critical “healing the healer” would be for her colleagues during the COVID 19 pandemic.
“Talking about challenging experiences and processing them in community helps us move through them and come out the other side more whole and able to hold onto our humanity and express empathy for our patients,” says Dr. Tolins, Emergency Medicine physician with KP East Bay.
Dr. Tolins is passionate about supporting her colleagues through adverse and difficult work experiences, by offering them the “emotional first aid” that they may need.
“When you’re a physician and you’re suffering after a really difficult experience, you don’t necessarily pick up the phone or find time to call someone,” Dr. Tolins says. “We take the onus off of the suffering provider and put it on their colleagues and leadership, to make sure we’re taking care of each other.”
The regionwide, voluntary peer-support network supports staff through potentially traumatic work experiences such as unexpected patient deaths and difficult interactions with patients or family members, to help prevent burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue.
POST is now available in 15 medical centers, with more than 400 physician and staff trained to offer peer-to-peer support. The rigorous, 4 hour POST training includes active listening, coping and resilience coaching, risk management, and ensuring confidentiality, as well as how to conduct red flag assessments to identify those who may benefit from a higher level of care.
In its first 5 years, POST had more than 550 successful physician interactions in the East Bay alone. Virtually all (98%) participants said their interaction with POST was helpful and 84% reported improvements in well-being.
Physicians who benefit from POST routinely offer powerful testimonials, demonstrating the profound individual and systemic impacts of the program. As one POST peer support recipient summarized, “POST has been instrumental in creating a culture shift towards emotional awareness, honoring and caring for each other around the trauma that we incur in our daily work.”