Peer Support

Our resources

We recognise the potential and actual effects of working in intensive care, on the welfare and mental health of staff and the value of supporting staff of intensive care units in mitigating these impacts. Our vision is to provide an evidence-based framework for supporting all members of staff who work in critical care, and a training programme to support its implementation. Peer support is one element of supporting staff in intensive care. Peer support offers a systematic, strategic approach to intervening to sustain staff who are coping well and to provide initial support those who are struggling.

We have a one day online training session which a team from your unit can attend to become Peer Supporters. We suggest that you engage as a unit to offer peer support, and have a minimum of 5 peer supporters per unit trained. Please refer to 'annex 2' for more details.

Please refer to our Strategic Framework for Peer Support which outlines the core principles and values for supporting people affected by incidents and adversity at work, the nature of stressors experienced at work, the strategic intent of supporting intensive care staff within which peer support sits, and then outlines the Peer Support Framework in its principles, values and structure for safe delivery. We thank Professor Richard Williams and Verity Kemp for their help in developing this framework.

You can find this framework for download below, and three important suplementary documents available to the right of the page. These documents are to be used with the Framework.

Our training

Are you looking to set up peer support in your intensive care unit? If so please email: [email protected].

We offer group training sessions around every two months, and can work with you to find an apporpriate training date. We ask that all participants atttend as part of group - peer support only works with you have multiple peer supporters trainined on your unit, so get in touch to get your team training!

Peer support for Trainee Doctors

In 2023 we are looking for Trainee Doctors to train as Intensive Care Society Peer Supporters across the UK coordinated via the Society. For more information contact [email protected]

Training dates

10 February 2023
10 March 2023*
29 September 2023
3 November 2023
1 December 2023

*This session is open only to SAS and trainee doctors. This training session is free, but attendees must be Society members and agree to work in a Trainee/SAS peer network coordinated by the Society.

Training costs

*Early Bird registrations close three months in advance of the training session.