We’ll help you make space for yourself once a month.
This is a professional development space that includes personal wellbeing.
Because people who spend their lives caring for others deserve care too.
Registration for 2027 opens soon. Sign up to be informed.
No spam. We'll only send you information about The CPD Self-Care Club, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Meet Your 2027 Speakers
Ten empowering monthly workshops. Ten important areas of your wellbeing.
The Hidden Cost of Being Capable
From Endurance to Sustainable Care
Medical Doctor, Executive Coach, Leadership Development Facilitator & Mindfulness Practitioner
Dr Maria Phalime
Being capable can become a trap.
When you’re someone who copes, gets things done and can be relied upon, it’s remarkably easy to keep going long after your own resources are running low. And in healthcare, endurance can begin to feel like simply part of the job.
In this thoughtful and practical workshop, medical doctor, executive coach and leadership facilitator Dr Maria Phalime explores what happens when the very strengths that make us good at what we do begin to cost us.
Drawing on her own experience of medicine and the insights from her book Postmortem – The Doctor Who Walked Away, Maria will explore the relationship between workplace stress, burnout and our capacity to keep functioning under pressure. She’ll help you think differently about recovery, energy and what it means to care for yourself without caring less.
This is an invitation to move beyond simply enduring – and begin finding ways of working and living that allow you to remain effective without continually drawing down your own physical, emotional and mental resources.
Dr Maria Phalime is a medical doctor, internationally experienced Executive Coach and Leadership Development Facilitator whose career has taken her from clinical medicine into leadership, public service, coaching, mindfulness and organisational development. She has facilitated leadership programmes for senior leaders across corporate, public and international development settings and serves as Adjunct Faculty at the United Nations System Staff College.
Maria holds an MBChB from the University of Cape Town, a Postgraduate Certificate in Mindfulness-Based Interventions from Stellenbosch University, and qualifications in coaching, leadership and facilitation. Her approach brings together neuroscience, mindfulness, Integral Theory and practical behaviour change to help people develop greater self-awareness and sustainable ways of working and leading.
She has worked with leaders through organisations including the World Health Organization, United Nations programmes, UCT, Standard Bank, Discovery and Parliament of South Africa. She also gives her time to teaching mindfulness to fourth-year medical students at UCT.
Maria is also the author of Postmortem – The Doctor Who Walked Away, which draws on her own experience of leaving clinical medicine and gives her a particularly personal understanding of the hidden costs that can accompany a life devoted to caring and achievement.
www.za.linkedin.com/in/mariaphalime
From Values to Vitality:
Reconnecting with Meaning, Purpose and Self-Care in Healthcare
Medical Doctor, Palliative Care Physician &
Founder of Values in Healthcare South Africa
Dr Raksha Balbadhur
Healthcare professionals often enter their professions because of deeply held values such as compassion, service, dignity, respect, justice and a desire to make a difference. Yet the demands of healthcare can gradually create a gap between the values that brought us into the profession and the way we experience our everyday work.
This session explores how reconnecting with our core values can support both professional meaning and personal wellbeing. Rather than viewing self-care as something separate from our professional lives, participants will be invited to consider how values can become an internal compass for making choices about how we work, relate to others and care for ourselves.
The session will explore:
Why values matter: Understanding the relationship between personal values, professional identity, meaning and purpose.
Values and healthcare: Exploring the values that bring people into caring professions and how these can become challenged by the realities of healthcare.
When caring becomes costly: Recognising the tension between compassion, responsibility and our own needs, including the risk of losing ourselves in caring for others.
The value of self-care: Reframing self-care not as selfishness or an additional task, but as an expression of the values we hold about ourselves and the quality of care we wish to provide.
Finding our inner compass: A practical reflection to help participants identify a core personal value and consider how they can bring it more consciously into both their professional and personal lives.
From insight to action: Identifying one small, values-aligned change that can support sustainable wellbeing and more authentic practice.
The session will be experiential and reflective, allowing participants to move beyond simply identifying their values towards considering how their values can guide everyday choices, boundaries, relationships and self-care.
Dr Raksha BalbadhurMBChB (UCT), DA (SA), MPhil Pall Med (UCT)
Dr Raksha Balbadhur is a palliative medicine physician and the Chairperson and Founder of Values in Healthcare (VIHASA) Africa, an initiative focused on bringing values, meaning, compassion and wellbeing into healthcare and professional practice.
She has extensive experience working with healthcare professionals and multidisciplinary groups across South Africa and internationally. Through VIHASA, she has developed and facilitated programmes addressing values-based care, caring for the carer, stress and burnout, compassion, dignity, meaning and purpose, and holistic wellbeing.
A central theme of her work is the recognition that sustainable caring requires attention not only to the needs of those we serve, but also to the wellbeing, values and inner resources of the person who is caring.
Find out more at
You Deserve Care Too:
The Ethics of Practitioner Self-Care
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, AUTHOR & SELF-LOVE ACTIVIST
Eilat Aviram
We healthcare practitioners are very good at caring for other people. But when it comes to caring for ourselves? That can feel selfish, indulgent – or like something we’ll get around to when everybody else is okay.
But what if we’ve got that backwards?
What if looking after ourselves isn’t something we do instead of caring well for our patients – but something that helps us care well for them?
In this lively and thought-provoking ethics workshop, clinical psychologist and self-love teacher Eilat Aviram turns the usual conversation about self-care on its head. We’ll explore what happens to our judgement, boundaries, relationships and professional practice when we continually give from depleted resources – and why our own wellbeing matters ethically, not just personally.
And rather than adding “self-care” to the endless list of things you should be doing better, we’ll look at what makes it so difficult for caring people to include themselves in their own care – and explore practical, compassionate ways to begin changing that.
Because perhaps caring for yourself isn’t selfish at all.
Perhaps it’s part of how you care for everyone else.
Eilat Aviram is a clinical psychologist, best-selling author, international speaker and self-love activist. For almost 30 years, her work has focused on helping people listen to themselves, understand their own needs and make self-loving decisions that support healthier, more sustainable lives.
She is the founder of If I Loved Myself, the self-love movement built around her deceptively simple question, “If you loved yourself, what would you do now?” and creator of The Portal of Permission – an online community where people learn to practise self-love and make more empowered choices in their everyday lives.
She has extensive experience across private practice, community healthcare and public psychiatric services, and has developed and facilitated CPD-accredited training for healthcare practitioners in practitioner self-care, burnout prevention, professional self-awareness, ethical practice and decision-making.
She is the author of the best-selling books If You Loved Yourself, What Would You Do Now? and You Have Permission to Exist. Her work brings psychology and practical self-love together to help people do something that sounds simple, but can be remarkably difficult – include themselves in the care, consideration and kindness they so readily give to others.
Explore Eilat’s work:www.ifilovedmyself.com
Making Admin Lighter
Building Systems That Support the Practitioner
Healthcare Operations & Systems Specialist
Dimpho Hlungwane
Administrative work is an unavoidable part of professional practice, yet many healthcare practitioners enter practice with extensive clinical training and limited preparation for managing the operational demands that come with their work.
This practical session explores how simple systems can reduce administrative overload and support a more structured and sustainable way of working.
Rather than treating administrative pressure as only a personal productivity or time-management problem, the session encourages practitioners to examine the systems around their work and identify where unnecessary pressure, duplication, delays, and mental load are created.
The session will explore:
Understanding your administrative load – identifying the recurring tasks, responsibilities and processes competing for attention.
Finding the friction – recognising where work gets delayed, duplicated, forgotten or repeatedly requires intervention.
Building simple systems – creating practical routines, workflows and structures that make recurring administrative work easier to manage.
Reducing reliance on memory – using systems to hold information, tasks and follow-ups rather than carrying everything mentally.
Creating a sustainable operating rhythm – determining what needs to happen daily, weekly and monthly to move from reactive to proactive administration.
Participants will be encouraged to apply the learning to one area of administrative pressure within their own working environment and identify practical changes that could make that work easier to manage.
Dimpho Hlungwane is a healthcare operations executive, strategist and systems specialist with more than 14 years’ experience in healthcare. She is currently Chief Operating Officer of Myclinic Healthcare Management, where she oversees the operational systems behind a growing multi-site healthcare practice.
She holds an MBA in Healthcare Leadership, awarded cum laude by Stellenbosch Business School, and specialises in turning complicated healthcare operations into practical systems, workflows and processes that make work run more smoothly. Her particular strength is translating strategy into what actually needs to happen on the ground – making her wonderfully placed to help practitioners find ways to make the administrative side of healthcare feel lighter and more manageable.
To find out more about her work visit: https://www.blaquejuice.com
Financial Wellbeing for Healthcare Practitioners:
Money, Pleasure and Self-care
Registered Financial Practitioner (RFP™), Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
Mary J Fourie
You spend your working life caring for other people – but how well are you caring for yourself financially?
Money can be a surprisingly difficult subject for healthcare practitioners. Ideas about service, sacrifice and being a “caring person” can sit uncomfortably alongside wanting to earn well, feel financially secure and enjoy what our money makes possible.
In this warm and practical workshop, Professional Certified Coach and Registered Financial Practitioner Mary J Fourie invites you to explore your relationship with money without judgement. You’ll look at the stories and beliefs that shape how you think, feel and behave around money, as well as practical habits for spending, keeping and growing it.
Mary brings purpose, money and pleasure together – helping you consider what financial wellbeing actually means for you, and how your money can support not only the work you care about, but the life you want to live.
Mary J Fourie is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Registered Financial Practitioner™ (RFP™), financial planner, facilitator and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience across financial services, coaching, leadership, training and business.
She brings an unusual combination of financial expertise and human-centred coaching to her work. Mary is an ICF Professional Certified Coach and a member of the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa, where she holds the Registered Financial Practitioner™ designation.
As founder of a licensed financial services provider, she spent years helping individuals, couples and groups bring together the practical, emotional and personal aspects of money – including how their finances can support their values, purpose and the lives they want to create.
At the heart of Mary’s work is a wonderfully refreshing idea: purpose, money and pleasure don’t have to compete with one another. We can care deeply about the work we do and also want financial freedom, abundance and a life that feels good to live.
Explore Mary’s work:www.maryjfourie.com
Self-Care Crucial Conversations
for Healthcare Practitioners:
Tools for talking when stakes are high
Clinical Psychologist and Crucial Conversations Master Facilitator
Dr Khosi Jiyane
Some of the hardest moments at work happen when we know we need to say something – but the conversation feels difficult, risky or emotionally charged.
In this practical workshop, clinical psychologist and Master Facilitator Dr Khosi Jiyane will draw on the Crucial Conversations framework to help you approach these moments with greater confidence and skill. You’ll explore how to recognise what is keeping you stuck, manage the stories and strong emotions that can hijack a conversation, become clearer about what you really want, and create enough safety to speak with both honesty and respect.
Because sometimes looking after yourself means having the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Dr Khosi Jiyane is a Clinical Psychologist and Certified Master Facilitator with The Human Edge. She holds a PhD in Psychology and a Master’s in Clinical Psychology, awarded cum laude. She has extensive experience helping people navigate the human challenges of work and life, with particular expertise in crucial conversations, leadership, conflict management, psychological safety, relationships and personal mastery.
Khosi facilitates Crucial Conversations and other Crucial Learning programmes across corporate, public and academic organisations throughout Africa. She is also an experienced speaker and media psychologist, with appearances across South African television and radio as well as BBC Africa. Human Edge
Her work is practical, engaging and deeply human – helping people develop the skills to communicate more effectively, navigate difficult situations and create healthier relationships at work and beyond.
Explore Khosi’s work with The Human Edge
Harnessing Breath and Attention: Mindfulness and Breathwork for Stress and Nervous-System Regulation
Registered Psychological Counsellor, Certified Breathwork Practitioner, Mindfulness & Energy Healing Facilitator
Shaamiela Safodien
Stress doesn’t only happen in our minds – our bodies carry it too. And for healthcare practitioners who spend so much of their time attending to other people, it can be surprisingly difficult to notice what is happening inside themselves.
In this experiential workshop, Registered Psychological Counsellor and Advanced Breathwork Practitioner Shaamiela Safodien will help you explore what happens in your body during stress and how mindfulness and conscious breathing can help you respond differently. You’ll learn about the stress response and autonomic nervous system, why presence matters, and how the breath can become a practical bridge between mind and body.
Shaamiela Safodien is an HPCSA Registered Psychological Counsellor, Advanced Breathwork Practitioner, mindfulness facilitator and energy-healing practitioner with extensive experience across private practice, psychiatric care, addictions, community mental health and group facilitation.Her work brings together psychology, mindfulness, spirituality and the somatic experience. With a deeply humanistic and integrative approach, Shaamiela is particularly interested in helping people develop greater self-awareness and reconnect with their own inner experience. She describes the breath as an important integrator – a way of bringing us more fully into the body and into contact with ourselves.
She has worked in the field of psychology for many years and currently runs Living with Insight, where she works with individuals, couples, families and groups and facilitates mindfulness and breathwork.
Explore Shaamiela's work at www.livingwithinsight.net
When Old Patterns Show Up at Work
Understanding and Releasing What Your Body Carries
Physiotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Mindfulness Teacher
Tracy Prowse
Have you ever wondered why certain situations at work affect you more strongly than others?
Perhaps a patient rejects your help, treatment isn’t working, someone leaves unexpectedly, or you find yourself working harder and harder to make things better. Sometimes what’s happening isn’t only about the situation in front of us – an old pattern has been activated too.
In this gentle, experiential workshop, physiotherapist, mindfulness teacher and Somatic Experiencing practitioner-in-training Tracy Prowse will explore how our earlier experiences can shape the ways we care, help, please and take responsibility – and how those patterns can show up in our professional lives.
You’ll learn to notice what happens in your body when an old pattern is activated, practise simple ways of returning to the present, and explore how to respond to yourself with greater curiosity, choice and self-compassion.
This isn’t about uncovering or processing deep trauma. It’s about recognising what you carry – so that when an old pattern shows up at work, you have more freedom in how you respond.
Tracy Prowse is an experienced physiotherapist, mindfulness teacher and educator whose work brings together physical health, pain science, mindfulness and the mind-body connection.
She holds an MPhil in Sports Physiotherapy from the University of Cape Town and has undertaken extensive postgraduate training in pain management, mindfulness-based interventions and somatic approaches. She is currently completing her training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
Tracy has worked clinically in South Africa and the UK across musculoskeletal physiotherapy, rehabilitation and persistent pain. Alongside her clinical practice, she has extensive experience teaching healthcare professionals – including mindfulness programmes, pain education and professional training – and has served on the board of the Institute for Mindfulness in South Africa.
At the heart of Tracy’s work is an integrated understanding of health: that our biology, psychology and social experience are deeply connected. Her approach combines evidence-based healthcare with curiosity, compassion and practical ways of helping people reconnect with their bodies and themselves.
Caring for Your Own Health:
When the Healthcare Practitioner Becomes the Patient
Occupational Medicine Specialist & Senior Lecturer, uct
Dr Itumeleng Ntatamala
Healthcare practitioners spend their working lives noticing what other people need. But what happens when the person who needs care is you?
Working in healthcare comes with very real physical, emotional and psychological demands – from long hours, pressure and fatigue to workplace stress, difficult environments and exposure to illness and injury. Yet healthcare practitioners can be remarkably good at carrying on, minimising their own needs or simply not knowing where to turn when they need help themselves.
In this practical workshop, Occupational Medicine Specialists Associate Professor Shahieda Adams and Dr Itumeleng Ntatamala turn the focus onto the health of the healthcare practitioner.
They’ll explore the occupational risks that come with caring for others, your rights and responsibilities when your own health is affected, and the pathways available for accessing appropriate support and care. Through a practical case study, they’ll help bring these issues out of policy and theory and into the reality of being a healthcare professional who sometimes needs to become the patient too.
Because being the person who usually provides the care doesn’t make you immune to needing it.
Dr Itumeleng Ntatamala is an Occupational Medicine Specialist, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town and Director of the Occupational Medicine Clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital. His work focuses particularly on the health and wellbeing of workers, with research spanning healthcare-worker burnout, psychological resilience, occupational stress and barriers to accessing care.
He is actively involved in shaping occupational health in South Africa through teaching, research and national professional bodies, and has received multiple awards for his work in public health and occupational medicine.
You can contact him at UCT here.
Caring for Your Own Health:
When the Healthcare Practitioner Becomes the Patient
Associate Professor & Occupational Medicine Specialist, UCT
Prof Shahieda Adams
Healthcare practitioners spend their working lives noticing what other people need. But what happens when the person who needs care is you?
Working in healthcare comes with very real physical, emotional and psychological demands – from long hours, pressure and fatigue to workplace stress, difficult environments and exposure to illness and injury. Yet healthcare practitioners can be remarkably good at carrying on, minimising their own needs or simply not knowing where to turn when they need help themselves.
In this practical workshop, Occupational Medicine Specialists Associate Professor Shahieda Adams and Dr Itumeleng Ntatamala turn the focus onto the health of the healthcare practitioner.
They’ll explore the occupational risks that come with caring for others, your rights and responsibilities when your own health is affected, and the pathways available for accessing appropriate support and care. Through a practical case study, they’ll help bring these issues out of policy and theory and into the reality of being a healthcare professional who sometimes needs to become the patient too.
Because being the person who usually provides the care doesn’t make you immune to needing it.
Associate Professor Shahieda Adams is an Occupational Medicine Specialist at the University of Cape Town and Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness, and Director of UCT’s Centre for Environmental and Occupational Health Research. She holds a PhD in Public Health and has extensive expertise in the occupational health of healthcare workers, workplace mental health and protecting the health and wellbeing of people at work.
Alongside her clinical and academic work, she provides specialist occupational health support to the Western Cape Department of Health and has played a significant role in training the next generation of occupational medicine specialists.
You can contact her at UCT here.
Self-Loving Decision Making:
Practical Tools for Uncertain Moments
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, AUTHOR & self-love activist
Eilat Aviram
Should I say yes or no? Stay or leave? Speak up or let it go? Push through or stop? What if I make the wrong choice?
Some decisions are easy. Others can send us round and round in circles – weighing up everyone else’s needs, second-guessing ourselves, looking for certainty that simply isn’t there.
In this practical and interactive workshop, clinical psychologist and author Eilat Aviram shares tools developed through almost 30 years of helping people navigate difficult decisions.
You’ll explore what gets in the way of knowing what you really want, how fear, guilt, responsibility and other people’s expectations can muddy the waters, and how to hear your own wisdom more clearly – even when there is no perfect answer.
At the heart of the workshop is one deceptively simple question:
If you loved yourself, what would you do now?
Not because loving yourself means doing whatever you want. And not because the answer will always be easy. But because including yourself in the decision can completely change the way you approach it.
You’ll leave with practical tools you can use in those uncertain moments when you’re stuck, torn or simply don’t know what to do next.
Eilat Aviram is a clinical psychologist, best-selling author, international speaker and self-love activist. For almost 30 years, her work has focused on helping people listen to themselves, understand their own needs and make self-loving decisions that support healthier, more sustainable lives.
She is the founder of If I Loved Myself, the self-love movement built around her deceptively simple question, “If you loved yourself, what would you do now?” and creator of The Portal of Permission – an online community where people give themselves permission to matter, and make more empowered choices in their everyday lives.
She has extensive experience across private practice, community healthcare and public psychiatric services, and has developed and facilitated CPD-accredited training for healthcare practitioners in practitioner self-care, burnout prevention, professional self-awareness, ethical practice and decision-making.
She is the author of the best-selling books If You Loved Yourself, What Would You Do Now? and You Have Permission to Exist. Her work brings psychology and practical self-love together to help people do something that sounds simple, but can be remarkably difficult – include themselves in the care, consideration and kindness they so readily give to others.
Explore Eilat’s work:www.ifilovedmyself.com
About The CPD Self-Care Club
You spend your working life caring for other people.
This is a monthly space to care for you too.
Across the year we’ll explore real self-care – including health, money, trauma, relationships, work stress, burnout, decision-making and more.
You’ll earn CPD points while:
- developing practical tools to care for yourself,
- feeling less alone in the challenges of healthcare work,
- and becoming more empowered to make changes that support both your personal and professional wellbeing.
February – November 2027 10 monthly live online workshops
Come to learn. Come to connect. Come to care for yourself too.
Because you matter.
Leave your details and we'll let you know when the 2027 Club opens.
For more information on Eilat's work visit www.ifilovedmyself.com
About The CPD Self-Care Club
You spend your working life caring for other people.
This is a monthly space to care for you too.
In each month's 2-hour online session we will:
February – November 2027 10 monthly live online workshops
Across the year we’ll explore real self-care – including health, money, trauma, relationships, work stress, burnout, decision-making and more.
You’ll earn CPD points while:
- developing practical tools to care for yourself,
- feeling less alone in the challenges of healthcare work,
- and becoming more empowered to make changes that support both your personal and professional wellbeing.
What is the investment?
R5,200 for all 10 upfront
R550 monthly x 10 months
R700 per single workshop
Come to learn. Come to connect. Come to care for yourself too.
Because you matter.
Leave your details and we'll let you know when registration for the 2027 Club opens.
For more information on Eilat's work visit www.ifilovedmyself.com