Psychiatric Trainees Committee Briefing for the Council of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Psychiatric Trainees Committee Briefing for the Council of The Royal College of Psychiatrists Meeting on 27th March 2014

Aim of the Briefing

This paper seeks to update Council about the key recent achievements and goals for the future of the College’s Psychiatric Trainees Committee (PTC).

Background

The PTC is a standing committee of Council. It has elected trainee representatives from each College division, as well as additional representation from patients, carers, overseas trainees, the armed forces, Foundation doctors and medical students.

The PTC aims to articulate the views of trainees in order to help improve training in psychiatry and consequently the care that people with mental health problems experience. It represents trainees throughout the College’s work and its members contribute to almost all of the organisation’s committees and groups.

Structure and Organisation

The PTC meets four times a year, including an annual residential meeting, which provides a vital opportunity to establish the organisational structure, forge working relationships and set objectives for the coming year.

The PTC is led by the three officers: the Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary.

To work more effectively the PTC has divided itself in to five working groups, each headed by a Lead and focussed on an area of particular importance to trainees.

The current groups are:

1.  Recruitment

2.  Training and Evidence

3.  Welfare

4.  Examinations

5.  Communication and Engagement

Additionally, short life groups are formed to address specific issues, as they arise.

Working Group Summaries

1) Recruitment

The Recruitment Working Group was established in recognition of the College’s focus on improving recruitment into psychiatry since the implementation of the College’s Recruitment Strategy in 2011. The group has played a pivotal role in recent successes in improving recruitment and works closely with medical schools and Foundation doctors. It has helped establish a network of psychiatry societies, provided input to the running of numerous recruitment events and disseminated innovative ideas to help boost recruitment.

Aims:

i)  To obtain an up-to-date database of psychiatry summer school events and create an information-sharing forum for contacts from each summer school.

ii)  To assist any Division without a summer school to set one up.

iii)  To write a guide on setting up a summer school and publish it on the College website.

iv)  To work with other organisations within the College to consider what constitutes a high quality psychiatry placement in the Foundation Programme

v)  To produce advice and guidance on setting up and running summer schools specifically aimed at Foundation doctors.

vi)  To obtain an up-to-date database of the different student psychiatry societies in existence and link a named contact with a Higher Trainee or Consultant who is able to act in an advisory role.

vii)  To target those few UK medical schools that don’t yet have their own student psychiatry society and provide support in setting up their own society.

viii)  To roll out a psychiatry “buddy” scheme across the UK from the Liverpool pilot site. This scheme pairs medical undergraduates interested in psychiatry with current Core Trainees.

2) Training and Evidence

The Training and Evidence Group was established to provide trainee input to support the College’s efforts to gather data about training and utilise the available evidence to improve training. The group has gathered evidence about various areas of training, including psychotherapy and work placed based assessment. The group has worked hard to forge better links between the organisers of MRCPsych courses across the country, including assisting in the establishment of a UK wide meeting of course organisers.

i)  To gain information about the impact of commissioning arrangements on training opportunities via a questionnaire for the Head of Schools of Psychiatry.

ii)  To collate information on patients’ experience of emergency psychiatry to assist the College’s Emergency Psychiatry Task Force.

iii)  To gather information through PTC representatives about the experiences of patient involvement in MRCPsych teaching.

iv)  To explore variation in local LETB/deanery specific requirements for ARCP.

v)  To conduct a literature review on patient involvement in teaching in psychiatry.

3) Welfare

The Welfare Working Group was newly created last year in response to the PTC’s desire to look at how to optimise the experience that trainees have during their training. Its work has focussed on increasing awareness about undermining amongst trainees and trainers.

Aims:

i)  To publish information about bullying and harassment to raise the profile of these issues.

ii)  To create a blueprint based on the ‘Undermining support group’ successfully instituted in Mersey, which would allow other areas to establish similar initiatives.

iii)  To liaise with the Psychiatrists Support Service and other similar organisations to develop links to better support trainees.

iv)  To investigate ways of linking with initiatives in other specialties to provide pan-specialty support.

4) Examinations

The Examinations Working Group was established to ensure that trainees could effectively contribute to the on-going development of College examinations. The main focus of the group has been the proposed exit assessment. A survey, designed by the group, received over 2000 responses. The quantitative analysis of these results have been written up as a paper and submitted to The Psychiatrist. The group has also fed in the views of trainees, gathered through a survey, to work on the curriculum.

Aims:

i)  To liaise with the Education and Training Standards Committee about the findings of the PTC’s Exit Exam Survey.

ii)  To analyse the qualitative data from the survey and submit this for publication.

iii)  To create an options appraisal to assist the development of an exit examination.

iv)  To work with the Examinations Sub Committee through the newly appointed trainee representative, to ensure that the MRCPsych examination remains a fair and rigorous assessment.

v)  To continue to feedback the views of trainees about the MRCPsych examinations, particularly in light of the future move from three to two written papers.

5) Communication and Engagement

The Communications and Engagement Working Group was established to increase trainee awareness of the College’s work and increase involvement in College activities. Specifically it seeks to enhance communication between the PTC and the wider trainee body. The group have produced slide sets, posters and films to support the local activities of representatives. The group has also worked to expand its social media presence and input in to the trainee areas of the College website.

Aims:

i)  To improve communication between PTC representatives, local trainees and LETBs/deaneries.

ii)  To highlight the work of the PTC in supporting trainees and representing them within the College and in external fora.

iii)  To regularly update the trainees’ section of the College website, including the newly established blog.

iv)  To increase the PTC’s social media presence to provide trainees with a range of avenues to receive up to date information.

Additional Areas of Work

Out of Hours Working Group

This former PTC Working Group was established in response to concerns that trainees had raised about the quality of exposure to emergency assessment some had experienced. The College responded by taking forward the group’s work and establishing the Emergency Psychiatry Taskforce to consider these issues further.

Shape of Training Response

The PTC conducted a consultation of all trainees via email and through local representatives. These views were synthesised to produce a formal response that was published on the trainees’ section of the College website:

Available online at http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/trainees.aspx

The PTC continues to engage trainees with the issues raised in the report and feed their views in to the College’s Shape of Training Working Group.

MedFest

The PTC provides on-going support to MedFest, a medical film festival in its forth year that now runs in almost every medical school in the UK and has expanded to several sites internationally. The lead of the festival is co-opted to the PTC and many of the local organisers are committee representatives:

For more information visit http://www.medfest.co.uk

Accessibility of Mental Health Beds

In response to concerns from trainees about the increased difficulties many have experienced in accessing mental health inpatient beds the PTC has created a survey to gather more evidence. This looks specifically at admissions to beds outside a patient’s local catchment area, admissions to inappropriate environments and the use of mental health legislation during the admissions process.

The Registrar: The PTC Newsletter and FuturePsych: The Student Associates Newsletter

The PTC produces a regular newsletter that allows trainees to publish and share experiences of training opportunities, as well as providing trainees with a forum to present and discuss important relevant issues. The PTC also supports the production of FuturePsych, which is aimed at students interested in psychiatry:

The Registrar available at http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/trainees/newsletters.aspx

FuturePsych available at http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/discoverpsychiatry/studentassociates/newsandevents/newsletters.aspx

Trainees Online

The College is establishing a series of online modules to support trainees preparing for the MRCPsych examinations. The PTC is closely involved with this work and the Trainee Editor is co-opted to the PTC to assist with effective liaison:

For more information visit http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/trainees/traineesonlinetron.aspx

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges Trainee Doctors Group (ATDG)

The PTC works with other national trainee committees on areas of cross-specialty interest and impact. Recently this has included the creation of a Trainee Charter, responding to Health Education England’s Specialty Selection Test pilot, collating views on the European Working Time Regulation Task Force’s recommendations and producing a consensus ATDG response to the Shape of Training Review report:

For more information visit http://www.aomrc.org.uk/committees/academy-trainee-doctors-group.html

The European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT)

The PTC is a member organisation of the EFPT, which brings together trainees from almost forty countries. The PTC has supported key EFPT initiatives, such as the international exchange programme for trainees and research in to the effects of the migration of psychiatrists. The EFPT’s annual forum will be held in the new College Headquarters in June 2014 alongside the International Congress:

For more information visit www.efpt.eu

Training Across Four Nations

The PTC has representation from all four home nations of the United Kingdom. Devolution of healthcare, heterogeneity in legal frameworks and recent policy changes mean that a number of significant differences exist between the experience of training in each of the four nations. The PTC is keen to help trainees understand these variations and hopes to produce guidance to facilitate smooth transitions between countries during the course of training.

Summary

The PTC is an enthusiastic and dynamic part of the College, committed to representing trainees within the organisation and beyond. It seeks to proactively identify and explore issues related to training in order to further improve the experience of trainees and benefit patient care.

Howard Ryland

Chair, PTC

March 2014

1