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-hr 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 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 published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Neff.Knox.2020, the SCHC program was found to significantly:
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 the following objectives:
The Self-Compassion Training for Healthcare Communities program meets for six 1-hour sessions.
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
All sessions are delivered live-online via Zoom meeting for an interactive learning experience. The SCHC program week by week:
Week 1: What is Self-compassion
Week 2: Practicing Self-Compassion
Week 3: Discovering Your Compassionate Voice
Week 4: Self-Compassion and Resilience
Week 5: Self-Compassion and Burnout
Week 6: Making it Count
We look forward to having you join this movement to bring Mindful Self-Compassion into healthcare!
“I learned practical skills that I use every day at the bedside and that I share with my residents. It gave me something to teach them and model for them besides simply telling them to take a day off when they were overwhelmed.”
~ Residency Program Director
“I never gave myself credit for how difficult my work is in healthcare and what it cost me personally. This course validated my own suffering which prompted me to actually make changes in my life and work from which everyone benefits.”
~ Pediatric Oncologist
“As a hospitalist in a busy trauma center, this course changed my life and my perspective on my work. I have a life now, see my family, and enjoy caring for patients again.”
~ Pediatric Hospitalist
For those who can afford to please consider paying at the full rate of $295 to help support scholarships for those in need.
Continuing Education is included for Nurses, Psychologists and MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs. No CME Credit is available for medical doctors. Please read below for more details.
No CME Credit is available for this course.
Continuing Education Credit is available for Nurses, Psychologists and MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs. You must attend all sessions live and complete a post course evaluation. CEs are included in your course registration fee.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You must attend all classes live to receive credits.
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.
Burnout, including secondary traumatic stress and emotional exhaustion, is prevalent among health care professionals and is a factor contributing to turnover (Cocker & Joss, 2016; West, Dyrbye, & Shanafelt, 2018). “Chronic stress associated with emotionally intense work demands for which resources are inadequate can result in burnout,” write West, Dyrbye, & Shanafelt (2018). The purpose of the 6-week Self-Compassion Training for Healthcare Communities is to teach healthcare workers on the job skills to meet the emotional demands of their work. Mindfulness and self-compassion practices for healthcare are intended to lower the chance that professionals will end their shifts emotionally depleted and increase their likelihood of feeling accomplished and satisfied in their caregiving roles.
Two studies conducted on Dell Children’s Medical Center staff who attended the 6-week training showed participants significantly increased in self-compassion, mindfulness, compassion to others, compassion satisfaction, and feelings of personal accomplishment, and significantly decreased in levels of stress, anxiety, depression and measures of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and secondary traumatic stress). Other peer-reviewed literature has found self-compassion training to reduce symptoms of burnout and increase self-compassion, mindfulness, and compassion satisfaction (Delaney, M.C., 2018; Eriksson et al., 2018).
References
Cocker, F., & Joss, N. (2016). Compassion fatigue among healthcare, emergency and community service workers: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(6), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph13060618
Delaney, M. C. (2018). Caring for the caregivers: Evaluation of the effect of an eight-week pilot mindful self-compassion (MSC) training program on nurses’ compassion fatigue and resilience. PLoS ONE, 13(11), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207261
Eriksson, T., Germundsjö, L., Åström, E., & Rönnlund, M. (2018). Mindful self-compassion training reduces stress and burnout symptoms among practicing psychologists: A randomized controlled trial of a brief web-based intervention. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(NOV), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02340
West, C. P., Dyrbye, L. N., & Shanafelt, T. D. (2018). Physician burnout: contributors, consequences and solutions. Journal of Internal Medicine, 283(6), 516–529. https://doi.org/10.1111/joim.12752
