To support and to be supported. A qualitative study of peer support centres in cancer care in Norway

To explore what peer supporters, patients and their relatives want and gain from peer support in cancer care.

Focus group interviews with peer supporters, and in-depth interviews with peer supporters, patients and relatives (N=38) and observations of daily activities in a Vardesenter ("Cairn Centre").

Peer supporters helped cancer patients and relatives with coping in and outside the hospital in several ways: (1) conveying hope and providing ways to cope in situations where despair would often be prevalent, thus protecting against unhealthy stress; (2) being someone who had the same experiences of disease and treatment, and thus providing a framework for positive social comparisons; and (3) to be an important supplement to family and health care providers. To be working as a peer supporter was also found to be positive and important for the peer supporters themselves.

The peer support program represented a valuable supplement to informal support from family and friends and healthcare providers, and gave the peer supporters a new role as "professionally unprofessional".

Organised peer support represents a feasible intervention to promote coping for cancer survivors.