8-Week Compassion Course for Physicians and Psychologists
Live on Zoom: January 28 – March 18, 2027
Compassion Cultivation Training for Physicians and Psychologists is an 8-week course with insights and techniques from psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative practice. The course integrates evidence-based meditation techniques, interactive discussions, and lectures as well as real-world exercises to put learning into practice. This class will provide a private and safe environment for physicians and psychologists to explore compassion issues.
Registration for Winter 2027 is Now Open
DATES
– Thursdays | January 28 – March 18
– 5:30pm – 7:30pm PT / 8:30pm – 10:30pm ET
FEES
– Early Bird Registration: $795
– General Registration: $950
– 16 CME credits offered (learn more)
– STAP: eligible upon approval
– Scholarships: apply here (NEEDS UPDATE)
REGISTRATION
– Early Registration open through October 30th
– Registration open through January 21st
– Review Course Policies Here
Early Registration Open through October 30th
A note from the course teacher, Dr. Diana Adams:
Dear Fellow Physicians and Psychologists,
We spend our careers recognizing and responding to suffering in others. What we are rarely taught is how to stay present with that suffering without absorbing it ourselves.
Over time, the emotional weight of caring for others can accumulate. We may experience empathic distress, compassion fatigue, burnout, or simply find it harder to remain as open and connected as we want to be.
Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) for Physicians and Psychologists offers a practical way to work with that experience.
Across eight sessions, you will learn and practice skills for meeting suffering with compassion while also caring for yourself. We will explore secular contemplative and mindfulness practices, the science of compassion, and ways to bring these skills into your everyday professional and personal life.
Just as importantly, this course is designed specifically for physicians and psychologists. Having a dedicated group creates space to speak openly about the experiences we encounter in our work, with colleagues who understand that context.
My hope is that you leave with more than an understanding of compassion. I hope you leave with practices you can actually use when the work is difficult, when someone else is suffering, and when you need compassion for yourself.
The course meets Thursdays from 5:30–7:30 PM PT, January 28 through March 18, 2027.
CCT was developed at Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). The full 16-hour course offers up to 16 CME credits through the Stanford Center for Continuing Medical Education and is eligible for STAP funding.
I hope you’ll join us.
Warmly,
Diana Adams, EdD
Director of Compassion Cultivation Training for Physicians and Psychologist, CCARE
Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The circle of compassion begins with ourselves.
Research on resilience, burnout, and self-valuation shows that physicians are highly capable of adapting to extraordinary demands. Yet many work within cultures and systems that reinforce self-neglect, self-condemnation after mistakes, and the persistent belief that they should have done more.
Compassion Education at Stanford CCARE (CESC) begins from a different premise: compassion for ourselves and others is both natural and trainable. It does not remove the demands of clinical work or excuse harmful systems. Instead, it strengthens how we relate to suffering, respond to difficult emotions, and care for ourselves and others.
This course invites you to activate your compassionate nature as a powerful force in everyday life. Designed around the distinct experiences of physicians and psychologists, it connects compassion practice with well-being, burnout, anxiety, and our relationship to work.
Throughout the course, you will learn to meet challenges with greater awareness, manage difficult emotions, build resilience, and find the courage to take compassionate action while protecting against empathy fatigue.
Related measurable factors targeted in the training are those repeatedly identified in the research:
- Professional meaning
- Interpersonal connection
- Self-compassion
- Emotion regulation
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, engaged participants will be able to:
- Describe compassion, empathy, empathic distress, and compassion fatigue, including relevant psychological and neurobiological mechanisms.
- Recognize their own cognitive, emotional, and physical responses to suffering, including barriers to compassion, self-judgment, perfectionism, and other common patterns.
- Apply breath-focused meditation, self-compassion, and other evidence-informed compassion practices when encountering suffering in clinical and everyday settings.
- Analyze how repeated exposure to suffering, dehumanization, and the demands of clinical work can affect clinicians, patients, relationships, and professional well-being.
- Evaluate different compassionate responses and restorative practices to determine which approaches are most helpful in specific professional and personal situations.
- Develop a personal approach for sustaining compassion and well-being through practices such as connection, common humanity, moral elevation, joy, and awe.
Meet the Teacher
Dr. Diana Adams
Director of Compassion for Physicians and Psychologists
Diana O. Adams, EdD is an Adjunct Professor in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a psychologist specializing in chronic pain and conditions that affect mood and functioning. Since joining Stanford in 1995, she has held numerous medical staff leadership roles, including five terms as Deputy Chief for Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and ten years on Stanford’s Medical Executive Committee. She is the Director of Compassion for Physicians and Psychologists at CCARE and teaches the 8-week course, Compassion Cultivation Training for Physicians and Psychologists.