Schedule and Registration

Note: CFM requires a minimum of 10 registrants per program. Classes with fewer than 10 registrants will be cancelled and provided a refund. Please be aware of this when making arrangements to attend this program.

Course Description

Have you ever wondered if there was a skill you could use to help you sustain real compassionate care for patients in the face of competing demands like technology and documentation, time pressure, patient trauma and fatigue?  Burgeoning research is showing that self-compassion skills can be of particular benefit to health care professionals, allowing them to experience greater satisfaction in their caregiving roles, less stress, and more emotional resilience. The good news is that self-compassion skills are trainable and build your capacity to handle stressful challenges.

Self-Compassion Training for Healthcare Communities (SCHC) is a 6-hour evidence-based healthcare adaptation of Mindful Self-Compassion, the empirically supported program of Dr. Kristin Neff at UT Austin and Dr. Chris Germer at Harvard Medical School. This brief training aims to improve wellbeing and personal resilience in healthcare professionals by teaching mindful self-compassion skills to deal with distressing emotional situations as they occur at work and at home. 
In research conducted in 2019 the SCHC program was found to significantly decrease depression, stress, secondary traumatic stress and burnout, and to increase self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion for others, and job satisfaction in healthcare professionals.
 
As opposed to other self-care techniques, self-compassion practices can be used on the spot while at work with patients and colleagues.  As a participant of the program you can learn tools to use throughout the day to: 

• Care for yourself while caring for others
• Be able to listen with compassion 
• Handle difficult emotions with greater ease
• Reconnect to the values that give your life and work meaning

Objectives

At the completion of this activity, participants should be able to:

• Describe the main components of self-compassion and mindfulness and how they may be integrated into their role as healthcare professionals.
• Explain the difference between empathy and compassion and utilize strategies to avoid emotional exhaustion.
• Demonstrate strategies they can use on the job to regulate difficult emotions while caring for others in pain.
• Apply at least one skill from each session to help them regulate emotions and care for themselves emotionally while caring for others who are experiencing difficulty.

6-week SCHC Course Fee

This course consists of six, 75-minute sessions and is offered for $275 ($250 if you pay in full 30 days in advance for the course).

UC SAN DIEGO EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT

UC San Diego Employees may take the course for $250 ($225 if you pay in full 30 days in advance for the course).

Continuing Education

Continuing education credits are awarded in the following categories: American Psychological Association and Board of Registered Nursing. They are available for an additional $15 fee.

Psychologists: UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 6.0 CE credit.

California licensed MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs: This activity is an approved continuing education program by the American Psychological Association. Credit hours may be applied to your license renewal through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. 6.0 CE credit.

Nurses: UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing to sponsor continuing education. Provider Number CEP16351. 7.0 contact hours.

Cultural and Linguistic Competency Statement

This activity is in compliance with California Assembly Bill 1195 which requires continuing medical education activities with patient care components to include curriculum in the subjects of cultural and linguistic competency. Cultural competency is defined as a set of integrated attitudes, knowledge, and skills that enables health care professionals or organizations to care effectively for patients from diverse cultures, groups, and communities. Linguistic competency is defined as the ability of a physician or surgeon to provide patients who do not speak English or who have limited ability to speak English, direct communication in the patient’s primary language. Cultural and linguistic competency was incorporated into the planning of this activity. Additional resources can be found on the UC San Diego CME website .

Disclosure

It is the policy of the University of California, San Diego Center for Mindfulness to ensure balance, independence, objectivity and scientific rigor. All persons involved in the selection, development and presentation of content are required to disclose any real or apparent conflicts of interest. All conflicts of interest will be resolved prior to an educational activity being delivered to learners through one of the following mechanisms: 1) altering the financial relationship with the commercial interest, 2) altering the individual’s control over CE content about the products or services of the commercial interest, and/or 3) validating the activity content through independent peer review.

Cancellation and Transfer Policy

A refund (minus your $50 non-refundable and non-transferable deposit) will be made for cancellations in writing via email to mindfulness@health.ucsd.edu prior to the 2nd class will. There will be no refund after the 2nd class.

In the unlikely event that the course is canceled, UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is responsible only for a full refund of the registration fee and not for transportation, hotel accommodations or any miscellaneous expenses.

SCHC Research

Research conducted in 2019 on 47 healthcare professionals suggests program attendance leads to significant increases in self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion to others and compassion satisfaction and decreases in stress, depression, and symptoms of burnout.
 
To date, 17 groups of 294 professionals have participated in Self-Compassion Training for Health Care Communities, including 146 research participants. The curriculum was also offered to 25 parents of children with chronic illness, and a qualitative investigation of their experience is expected to be completed by March 2020. A hospital institutional review board (IRB) has approved a quantitative study on the presentation of two different formats of the curriculum: a 1-day, 6-hour workshop and a course offered once a month for six months. Currently, a qualitative study on healthcare professionals’ experiences of attending the training is underway and results are expected in March 2020. The results of three quantitative studies conducted from 2016 to 2019 are currently under peer review.

Learn more about the research done on the SCHC program: Caring for Others Without Losing Yourself

  "A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life."     -Chris Germer, PhD