THRIVE Peer Support Collaborative

The Society of Critical Medicine, through the THRIVE Initiative, is offering up to seven $1,000 grants aimed at expanding an existing international network of in-person support groups linking survivors of critical illness and their families.

SCCM believes that ICU survivors have unique knowledge and skills that they can share with each other to help improve recovery. The THRIVE Initiative seeks to catalyze this sharing by creating an ICU survivor community.

In face-to-face groups, survivors will offer mutual support and share solutions related to ICU recovery. The goal of this program is not to fund ICU follow-up clinics, but rather to develop peer-support models with strong survivor co-leadership as the foundation of a growing international network of such groups.

Applications are open September 3 through October 19, 2018.

Any hospital or associated professional group may apply, but the application must be led by at least one SCCM member. Grant recipients will be already running, or about to start, an ongoing survivor support group.

The participation of a variety of centers and formats is encouraged, but the support groups should:

Include survivors, both patients and loved ones.
Be open to survivors along the continuum of recovery, from ICU to years after discharge.
Aim to develop strong survivor co-leadership, even if not initially in place.
Build on local resources and successful models of other forms of survivor support, customized to the unique needs of ICU survivors and the local community.

The application requires the following information:

Commitment statement
Description of the institutional context and specific local leadership team who would organize and run the group.
Description of the model you will use for running such a group, and the experience on which you will draw to support the group.
Description of plan to implement the group this year.
Description of how participation in the Thrive Network will help you succeed.

Recipients will share knowledge and a strong sense of community and will have the opportunity to take a leadership role in growing an international network.

Grant recipients commit to participating in an open learning network to share best practices, problems and solutions. Commitments include:

Requiring at least one active representative to participate in international conference calls held every other month. These calls serve to share program models in some detail, discuss successes, and jointly brainstorm solutions to problems. In addition, sites agree to a monthly call with SCCM’s THRIVE staff patner to share successes and problems.
Sending at least one representative to the next SCCM Annual Congress to participate in a panel discussion on establishing in-person sites.
Trying different models of establishing a support group if the first model is not successful.
Participating in some form of quality improvement data collection as developed by the network.
Submitting an end-of-year report.

Applications will be reviewed by a committee of SCCM members and evaluated on the basis of the innovativeness of the model, the plausibility of success given local support, and the willingness to participate in an international network. SCCM is open to partnering with a mix of existing ICU survivor programs, those that are an ICU-specific extension of existing programs for other populations, and new start-up programs that have exciting teams.

The goal of this program is not to fund ICU follow-up clinics, but rather to develop peer-support models with strong survivor co-leadership as the foundation of a growing international network of such groups. SCCM expects to add additional groups in each of the next two years.

Selected sites will receive notification by mid-November 2017, and will receive $1,000 in unrestricted funds.