Introduction <p>Challenges of academic life are major sources of stress and anxiety for students, often manifesting as various psychological disorders. These disorders could adversely impact students’ performance, leading to multiple negative consequences. This risk is of particular importance among nursing and midwifery students due to their critical role in promoting mental health and well-being in the community. Despite the impact of certain educational and psychological interventions on coping with academic challenges, studies focusing on self-compassion training remain limited. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of self-compassion training on resilience and reflective thinking among nursing and midwifery students.</p> Materials and methods <p>This clinical trial, utilizing a pretest-posttest design with a control group, was conducted on 90 nursing and midwifery students at Bushehr University of Medical Sciences in 2023. Participants were selected through convenience sampling and then randomly assigned to either the intervention or control group (<i>n</i> = 45 per group). The intervention group underwent self-compassion training in eight 90-minute sessions over the course of one month, while the control group received no intervention. The instruments used included a demographic form, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the Groningen Reflection Ability Scale (GRAS). Data analysis was performed using SPSS 20.0.</p> Results <p>Most of the participants were female nursing students. Data analysis indicated that the self-compassion intervention significantly increased students’ resilience (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001). However, while overall reflective thinking did not show a significant improvement in the intervention group (<i>p</i> = 0.057), it declined over time in the control group (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.001).</p> Conclusion <p>Self-compassion training could effectively enhance students’ resilience, suggesting that implementing self-compassion workshops at the beginning of students’ academic programs may help strengthen their resilience. Although the intervention did not significantly increase reflective thinking, the decline observed in the control group indicates that without such interventions, reflective thinking may decrease over time. These findings highlight both the potential practical applications of self-compassion training and the need for further studies to explore strategies to actively improve reflective thinking.</p> Trial registration <p>This trial’s protocol was registered in the Iranian Clinical Trials Registration system on September 28, 2022 (Trial Number: IRCT20220830055827N1). This Protocol is available in <a href="https://irct.behdasht.gov.ir/trial/65728">https://irct.behdasht.gov.ir/trial/65728</a>.</p>