Isolated Medical Provider Aftercare Team 

Potentially challenging clinical incidents, such as those involving children, multiple casualties, or friends or family members of the medical provider, are unavoidable in rural practice. At times, these incidents cause medical providers mental health distress, including burnout, and lead them to avoid or leave rural practice. When medical providers are able to share and talk through challenging clinical incidents in a safe and accepting environment, they have a lower risk of additional or cumulative distress arising at a later time.

The Isolated Medical Provider Aftercare Team (IMPACT) launched its program through the Rural Coordination Centre of BC (RCCbc) and is currently being piloted in the Northern Health Region, and nursing stations within the First Nations Health Authority and Nisga’a Valley Health Authority. The Program offers peer-to-peer non-clinical emotional support—compassion, empathy, and direction to other helpful resources—to rural physicians and remote community health nurses who have experienced a potentially challenging clinical incident.

Our Achievements

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Launched the Program

IMPACT successfully launched in December 2021, offering peer-to-peer support to rural physicians and nursing station nurses in the Northern Health Region. To raise awareness about IMPACT, we created and distributed information and marketing materials through the RCCbc network, including posters, social media posts and information sheets, and held meetings with regional and provincial contacts. We also devised and implemented evaluation parameters to ensure continuous quality improvement, and developed a strategy to expand the geographic scope of the program and team of Peer Supporters in the coming year.

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Co-created Processes & Training with BC Emergency Health Services

We advanced IMPACT’s partnership with BC Emergency Health Services, including developing and refining the processes and training materials for initiating IMPACT. This collaborative relationship will eventually allow Patient Transfer Coordinators to phone the IMPACT line after a critical event occurs, so an IMPACT Peer Supporter can proactively offer peer support to the health provider experiencing the event.

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Grew Provincial Partnerships & Exchanged Knowledge 

Our team connected with the BC Physician Health Program to exchange knowledge and experience around IMPACT and its offerings. We also liaised with leads of the Real-Time Virtual Support Program to discuss IMPACT as a peer-to-peer support resource for both its virtual physicians and the rural physicians and nurses who use its pathways.

Making a Difference

With the launch of the IMPACT this year, physician leads, Drs. Ed Marquis and Blair Stanley, are changing the culture of rural medicine. IMPACT offers isolated rural doctors, nurse practitioners, and nurses a safe space to talk about the challenging incidents they experience in the course of their work with other rural practitioners—and the program is quickly gaining interest.

“All regional health authorities in British Columbia are eager for us to expand beyond the Northern Health Region, where we’re currently piloting,” says Dr. Marquis. “And since the launch, RCCbc’s Rural CME liaisons have told us that rural doctors are showing curiosity and expressing interest in IMPACT’s rural peer-to-rural peer support.”

Dr. Stanley also notes that enthusiasm to become an IMPACT peer supporter is also growing amongst rural doctors.

“We’ve received a lot of unsolicited interest from rural family doctors to become trained peer supporters with IMPACT,” says Dr. Stanley. “It’s tremendously encouraging because it’s this caring community of rural medical providers who best understand the challenges of delivering care in small, limited-resourced communities.”

In the coming year, Drs. Marquis and Stanley will continue building partnerships with BC Emergency Health Services and its Patient Transfer Coordinator team, the BC Physician Health Program, and the Real-Time Virtual Support Program. And, as the program expands operations across the province, additional rural peer supporters will be recruited and trained.