Self-Compassion for HealthCare Communities
Through lectures, discussion, and experiential exercises, healthcare professionals will learn how to stop being so hard on themselves, handle difficult emotions with greater ease, and develop techniques and skills that sustain and nurture themselves while handling demanding situations with patients, colleagues, and patients’ families. Practices will be introduced to help ease stress associated with caregiving and patient care. This program is specifically tailored to the challenges in Health Care.
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.
In research published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Neff.Knox.2020, the SCHC program was found to significantly:
o Decrease: Depression, Stress, Secondary Traumatic stress, and Burnout
o Increase: Self-compassion, Mindfulness, Compassion for others, 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 the following objectives:
o Be able to describe the key components of self-compassion and mindfulness and how they can be integrated into your role as a healthcare professional.
o Be able to explain the difference between empathy and compassion and utilize strategies to avoid emotional exhaustion.
o Be able to practice techniques to increase self-compassion at work and everyday life.
o Practice at least one skill from each session to care for yourself emotionally while caring for others who are experiencing difficulty.
Course expectations
Seven 1 hour sessions on Zoom, or in person, over 7 weeks.
Participants receive group instruction, downloadable SCHC Workbook that includes: daily at-home practice guidelines, reflection journal, mindfulness activities, and recorded audio meditations designed specifically for Health Care.
To bolster the daily SCHC experience, participants are given home practice audio and journaling suggestions.
What is the need for Self-Compassion training in healthcare?
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).
CONTINUING EDUCATION
CME Credit: This session is approved for a total of 6 AAFP Prescribed credits. AAFP Prescribed credit is accepted by the American Medical Association as equivalent to AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s)™ toward the AMA Physician’s Recognition Award. When applying for the AMA PRA, Prescribed credit earned must be reported as Prescribed, not as Category 1. 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.
o Nurses: UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number CEP16351, for 7.0 CE credit.
o Psychologists: Continuing Education Credit for this program is provided by UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. The 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. This course offers 6.0 CE credit.
o California licensed MFTs, LPCCs, LEPs, LCSWs: Continuing Education Credit for this program is provided by UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. 6.0 CE credit may be applied to your license renewal through the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. For those licensed outside California, please check with your local licensing board to determine if CE credit is accepted
o IMPORTANT NOTE: You must attend all classes live to receive CEs credits.
“This is a great program! It focuses on application of mindfulness and self compassion techniques to realistic situations that health care professionals encounter in their work. I really liked the opportunities to work directly with the instructors and the other participants. The smaller breakout group format allowed more personal reflections also. Importantly, the skills learned are translatable to other settings of life, not just delivering health care. I also like how Lisa was able to directly address individuals in the class and respond in ways that provided benefit to the whole group.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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