Health and social professionals face situations of great psychological and emotional involvement in the daily practice of their work (Sook-Han, Won-Han & Hyung-Kim, 2018). Repeated contact with people's suffering leads them to a situation of vulnerability for the development of various mental problems (stress, anxiety, fatigue, burnout), related to burnout syndrome and compassion fatigue (Hemsworth et al., 2019; Vincent, Brindley, Highfield, Innes, Greig & Suntharalingam, 2019).

However, introducing compassion and the effective helping relationship as a model for relating to people who are suffering can have positive effects on professionals, as it improves the perception of professional usefulness as a helping agent, generating what is known as compassion satisfaction (Jang, Kim & Kim, 2016), which has the potential to be a protective factor for both burnout and compassion fatigue, improves the quality of professional life of professionals and can also improve the quality of the care practices they develop.

Recent studies have shown that the levels of compassion fatigue in Andalusian Public Health System (APHS) professionals is medium-high in a high percentage (Ruíz-Fernández et al., 2020), so that the cultivation of helping relationship skills and compassion can improve this situation. The aim of this postgraduate degree is to improve the helping relationship skills of helping professionals (health and social services), as well as to introduce them to the practice of compassion as an essential element in their relationship with patients and families in situations of vulnerability and vital suffering.

The proposed contents start with a brief theoretical approach to the proposed concepts to move towards a purely practical orientation, in which relational strategies to apply compassion and self-compassion in the practice of care will be addressed, with a mainly practical orientation through simulations, role-plays and sharing of real experiences. The proposed teaching staff comes from both the academic field (university professors with teaching experience, lines of research and international publications on the subject) and the clinical field, including other aspects that help in the practice of compassion, such as the use of artistic expression. The course is aimed at health professionals in general, especially those who work in direct contact with patients and families in complex care settings.