Associate Clinical Professor
Stanford University School of Medicine
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Sheila Lahijani, MD, FACLP is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of Medical Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Medical Director of the Stanford Cancer Center Psychosocial Oncology Program. She is a graduate of Brown Medical School, the Combined Internal Medicine/Psychiatry Residency Program at Rush University Medical Center, and the Psychosomatic Medicine Fellowship at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University. During her fellowship, she also served as a psychiatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Since 2015, Dr. Lahijani has served as a CL psychiatrist at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, including on the blood and marrow transplant/cellular therapy units. As Medical Director, she oversees the development and operationalization of psychiatric care for patients with cancer. She is trained in and administers several psychotherapeutic modalities, including Meaning Centered Psychotherapy and Dignity Therapy. She teaches psychiatry, internal medicine, heme/onc, and neurology trainees. Dr. Lahijani is the Chair of ACLP's Psycho-Oncology/Palliative Medicine SIG and serves on the Program Committee for the American Psychosocial Oncology Society (currently the 2025 Program Chair), the Advisory Panel for Cancer.Net by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the Distress Management and Cancer Related Fatigue Guidelines Panels for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Her clinical and scholarly interests are focused on the interface of medicine and psychiatry, neuropsychiatric sequelae of cancer therapies, interdisciplinary and graduate medical education, and mentorship. As Faculty of the Advancing Communication Excellence at Stanford, she leads foundational workshops for faculty and staff to advance relationship-centered communication skills.
