Online Learning Modules

WELCOME to the Center for Compassionate Communication's online learning page! Our engaging, highly rated online modules are video-based courses that reach beyond typical e-Learning by incorporating real stories, real providers and patients, interactive knowledge checks, exercises and more.

Our online learning modules are hosted on the Coursera platform. Please login to your Coursera account and search for:

• "A New Communication Framework for Healthcare"
• "Communicating with the Public"

If you're a medical educator in search of content that utilizes the arts and humanities, we’ve done our best to make things simple for you.  Please review these courses, and if you’d like the Canvas version for your students, please reach out to Norma at nonava@health.ucsd.edu. We’ve also included a free Facilitator Guide with simple suggestions to practice skills learned from the modules in the classroom. Fill out the Facilitator Guide request form links next to the course to have the Facilitator Guide for that course sent to your email inbox. You might also consider requesting our Full Facilitation Manual or attending our Lead with Compassion conference to build your skills as a physician, nurse or medical educator. This conference is the first step to becoming a trained trainer and will be followed up by subsequent zoom trainings.    

Currently offered online courses: 

A New Communication Framework for Healthcare  |  Facilitator Guide request form            

This four-part online series is comprised of the following modules:

– Foundations in Compassion

– Narrative Humility

– Speaking Plainly

– The Clinical Story

The series utilizes techniques from the arts and humanities, and journalism, to improve healthcare providers’ communication skills through a robust survey of empathic and compassionate principles directly related to interpersonal communication. After studying these principles, providers demonstrate increased personal awareness and professional satisfaction. Empirical studies prove that these types of improvements lead to better health and wellbeing outcomes for providers and patients alike.

Communicating with the Public  |  Facilitator Guide request form

This two-part online series consists of the following modules:

– The Big Idea

– What's the Story?

In this series, industry professionals from medical and science communication, theater and television news teach your learners how to present their ideas to various public audiences. These audiences might include students, potential founders, business organizations, conference attendees and TV news viewers. Both modules feature fillable forms that help learners get ideas “down on paper,” and in the proper sequence.

‘The Big Idea’ largely draws on television news best practices, and offers a method for healthcare providers to get their main message right up front. This is especially helpful when time is limited, such as an elevator pitch or television interview.

'What’s the Story?’—rooted in theater practice—offers a method to engage the audience in the human story when delivering complicated concepts to a lay audience, and when you have more time to develop your message.