Why do patients sometimes resist peer counseling? - Julie Gassaway, MS, RN

Peer counseling can be thought of as just one more thing I have to do. “Do I have to have another meeting?” “Do I have to go to another appointment?” “Is someone else going to come into my room?” “I am tired; I may not want to do this, so I may not see the value of it right away.” Typically in our experience anyway, when people do that they can be resistant for a little while. But after impromptu run-ins, if you will, with the peer counselor, they kind of see the value. And sometimes that resistance changes where instead of being resistant, people are really looking forward to talking with a peer because they do realize it is just somebody else like me, it’s not another clinician telling me what to do, it is somebody kind of showing me the way.