January/February 2026 (Now delivered every 2 months!)

FEATURE 

The Mentor Clinician Program (MCP), facilitated by the Sanford Institute's Center for Mentorship in Medicine, is celebrating 10 years of mentorship and humanistic teaching at UC San Diego School of Medicine this year. 

The MCP transforms how future physicians are trained by delivering individualized mentorship and coaching to medical students from experienced Mentor Clinicians (MCs), with an emphasis on clinical skill development and empathic/compassionate care.

The program comes in at a critical juncture in a medical student's training: the third-year clerkship. While the first two years of medical education are focused on gaining knowledge in the classroom, students in their third year begin the transition to caring for patients by rotating through a series of clinical clerkships in the major fields of medicine. 

Now, in its milestone year, the MCP marks an exciting new chapter with its expansion beyond the UC San Diego School of Medicine. 

We are proud to announce the seven institutions below will bring the MCP to their pediatric clerkships:

📍 The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
📍 Medical College of Wisconsin
📍 New York University Grossman School of Medicine
📍 Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
📍 University of California Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine
📍 University of South Florida
📍 University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center 

The MCP partner institutions serve as powerful drivers of compassionate mentorship across the country. Through their commitment to mentorship rooted in empathy, these sites are helping foster a broader culture of care, human connection, and professional development.

Dr. Ashish Shah, partner site director for the Medical College of Wisconsin, shares "We’re piloting MCP in pediatrics, but the long-term vision is to expand across specialties, just as UC San Diego has done. While different specialties have their nuances, the underlying principles of MCP — mentorship, empathy and individualized feedback — are universal.” 

UC San Diego Today recently featured the MCP, showcasing its transformative impact on medical students and faculty, its growing momentum, and its ambitious pursuit of becoming the gold standard for clinical training nationwide. 

COMMUNICATION

The burden of moral distress is too often placed solely on individual healthcare providers. However, a paradigm shift is underway to foster institutional culture change. This free webinar, hosted by the Center for Compassionate Communication, introduces a moral distress debriefing tool that fosters shared responsibility, reduces provider isolation, and promotes sustainable, values-driven practice in today’s complex and evolving healthcare environment.

RESEARCH

The Center for Research on Empathy and Compassion is kicking off a new season of the Empathy & Compassion Research Speaker Series. This free virtual series highlights the groundbreaking research that Sanford Institute-affiliated faculty and researchers have played an integral role in. It is designed for anyone with an interest in empathy and compassion in neurobiology and healthcare. Join us for the first presentation on Thursday, March 19, "Understanding EMR-Enabled Assessment of Non–Face-to-Face Workload in Primary Care."

LEADERSHIP

Lead With Compassion is an immersive, multi-day Zoom workshop that equips health care professionals, medical educators, and teaching artists who work in medical education and health care with tools to enhance their leadership performance, using proven empathy and compassion principles. This is a multi-day event; one registration ($150pp) covers all days. Sessions start on Wednesday, April 8. Register now — this workshop will fill up!

SPOTLIGHT

In 2025, the Sanford Institute’s Director of Medical Integration, Jenna Tutjer, traveled to Taiwan as part of the Fulbright Taiwan Higher Education EMI Consortium Delegation, where she explored English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), Taiwan’s higher-education landscape, and the Ministry of Education’s strong emphasis on social-emotional learning.

This month, the exchange came full circle with more than 20 professors and PhD students from 16 Taiwanese universities traveling to UC San Diego to participate in the Fulbright Taiwan EMI program. The goal: to enhance their pedagogical skills and advance efforts to cultivate more supportive, compassionate classroom environments in their respective schools. 

Jenna offered insights from her experience, shared below.

Over the last two weeks, the Sanford Institute facilitated three workshops with the Fulbright Taiwan learners, focused on: 
💡 Building foundational knowledge and skills in empathy and compassion
📰 Creating more compassionate course policies and materials
💬 Engaging in the reflective inquiry feedback process to communicate more compassionately

The group was enthusiastic, joyful, and eager to learn; the energy was clearly contagious. It was invigorating to not only be surrounded by curious colleagues, but also to be teaching something that I deeply believe in and is supported by science.

International partnerships like this are powerful and inspiring. They underscore the concept of common humanity: that we all experience successes and challenges and that we're not alone in both the joys and the struggles. I'm grateful for my friends and colleagues in this Fulbright Taiwan (Foundation for Scholarly Exchange) 學術交流基金會 program for reminding me that curiosity and empathy are powerful ingredients in moving us towards a more compassionate world. 

Thanks to UC San Diego Global Initiatives and to Fulbright Taiwan for valuing and including empathy and compassion in the work you do. Together, we make a difference.

NEWS

— William Mobley, MD, PhD, Founding Director of the Sanford Institute, will lead a lecture on advancing empathy and compassion in patient care as part of the Moores Cancer Center Distinguished Scientist Director’s Lecture Series. The presentation will take place on Wednesday, March 11, at 4 p.m. (PST) at the Goldberg Auditorium, as well as livestreamed via Zoom. RSVP to attend in-person or register for webinar.

— The Center for Empathy and Social Justice in Human Health was recently published in Discover Education for its scoping review of compassion, empathy, and belonging in undergraduate mentorship programs. The findings from this review provide a foundation for the development of inclusive mentorship programs to support undergraduate students’ experiences of belonging. Read the full manuscript.

— Center for Empathy and Technology Director Cinnamon Bloss, PhD and Associate Director of Measures and Methods Melissa Karnaze, PhD, were recently published in Nature Human Behavior for their study on emotional support from conversational AI. Read the publication.

— Deadline approaching! The Symposium for Innovation in Medical Education (SIME) is accepting submissions for workshops that aim to propel the field of medical education forward. SIME presents a unique opportunity to share your expertise and innovative concepts with a dynamic community of distinguished faculty, fellows, residents, and mentor clinicians from UC San Diego, Rady Children’s Health, and beyond. Deadline to submit workshop: Monday, March 2 at 5 p.m. (PST). Submit your workshop.

AWARDS

Congratulations are in order for our Sanford Scholars, who delivered an exceptional showing at this month’s UC San Diego School of Medicine Research Symposium. The symposium was met with enthusiastic reception, featuring 11 students who presented high-caliber, professionally executed posters alongside compelling project narratives centered on empathy and compassion.

We are especially proud to share that two Sanford Scholars earned top honors, receiving first and second place awards. We invite you to learn more about these scholars and their inspiring studies below.

🥇 First Place: Vanessa Ho
Mentor: Dr. Jesse Qualliotine
Study: Compassionate language in illustrative surgical guides for cancer patients

🥈 Second Place: Samira Torna
Mentor: Dr. Sarah Averbach
Study: Patient experiences of traveling to seek abortion care

FREE RESOURCES

How can you show you care even when you deeply disagree? What if conflict wasn't something to avoid, but rather an opportunity to connect more deeply to get closer to the truth? Hosted by the Center for Compassionate Communication, watch "Can Conflict be Compassionate?" — a webinar that explores ways to thoughtfully prepare for conflict-heavy conversations and apply a coaching mindset to balance acceptance with advocacy.