Managing High Impact Emotions for Healthcare Professionals - (May 27 - 29, 2026)

Managing High Impact Emotions for Healthcare Professionals is organized by University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (UCSD) Physician Assessment and Clinical Education Program (PACE) and will be held from May 27 - 29, 2026.

Course Description: 
In today’s challenging care delivery system, healthcare professionals often find themselves in high stress environments where the stakes are high. These challenging professional situations can elicit very normal “high-impact” emotional responses that may lead us away from productive engagement and problem solving. While healthy emotions (such as anger and frustration) can be harnessed to motivate healthy, goal-directed action, simply reacting unconsciously to emotions can have dire personal and professional consequences for healthcare professionals in the workplace, and the teams they work within and lead.

In this 3-day program we explore the origin and purpose of emotions, and help participants develop strategies that can harness the power of these feelings into constructive action to minimize risk and maximize professional well-being. All physicians have the opportunity to be effective leaders in the workplace and the course also explores leadership fundamentals such as building and maintaining healthy clinical teams, and effective, empathic, and empowering communication skills for the physician leader.

Learning Objectives:

• Helping participants identify triggers in the workplace that can lead to disruptive behavior.
• Didactic instruction providing constructive tools and strategies to aid in managing high impact emotions (such as anger and fear ) and conflict in an appropriate and professional manner including:
  • Increasing Emotional Intelligence
  • Empathy Training
  • Stress and anger management
  • Affect management
  • Conflict resolution and cooperation
  • Effective leadership and teambuilding in healthcare
  • Effective communication for clinical leaders
• Using behavioral and cognitive skills to develop coping strategies and healthy interactions in the healthcare environment.
• Developing a customized professional action plan (Commitment to Change).

PACE provides a dynamic training program that offers professionals an opportunity to obtain educational information and personalized assessment in a highly sensitive, supportive and confidential environment away from the workplace. This small-group program is limited to no more than 12 participants to maximize attendee engagement and participation.