Home Care Employees’ Experiences of Collegial Peer Support during the Pandemic

Abstract

Employee wellbeing has in many cases weakened and peer support has lessened. Nurses’ exhaustion and decisions to change jobs are major challenges to the social and health care field. The purpose of this study was to chart home care employees’ experiences of collegial peer support during the pandemic. The study questions were what is employees’ collegial peer support like? And how could collegial peer support be developed? This study is part of a national project. The data were collected through themed group interviews conducted via the Teams platform. The participants were 15 nurses who work in the Pirkanmaa region. The data were analyzed through inductive content analysis. The home care nurses’ collegial peer support is based on trust and is visible as peer support that reinforces employee agency, multichannel communication and a customer-focused, organization-based approach. The respondents wished for supervisors’ support, official permission and training in experimenting with different forms of peer support. Through this study, collegial peer support in nursing has been made visible and modelled on a new conceptual level. The organization-based peer support that rose as part of the results offers an important perspective on the growing labor shortage in the social and health care field. The opportunities offered by collegial peer support between social and health care professionals require further study. Keywords: collegiality, peer support, employees, home care, Finland