Tom Brown: Associate Registrar for Recruitment
Improving recruitment
As you will be aware the College launched a
5 year Recruitment Strategy earlier this year. If you have
not already read the Recruitment Strategy I would urge you to do
this as improving recruitment is the business of all psychiatrists
and not solely a College committee. I would particularly like to
draw your attention to the appendices, which provide guidance on a
number of initiatives that may be helpful in improving recruitment
to psychiatry.
Exciting initiatives
The College’s Divisions, supported by the
Faculties and Sections (in particular the Academic Faculty), are of
central importance in delivering the goals of the strategy around
the UK. Most Divisions have set up their own local recruitment
committee to oversee this. This is already beginning to bear
fruit and a range of exciting initiatives have been taking place,
which include:
- A buddying scheme in Liverpool started
by a psychiatry trainee (Dr Declan Hyland). This aims to
‘buddy’ junior psychiatrists with interested medical
students/foundation doctors to help support and maintain their
interest in psychiatry.
- A scheme in the South West Division
where psychiatry trainees organise and oversee foundation programme
taster weeks in psychiatry.
- A ‘Twilight Meeting’ organised by the
London Division for foundation doctors interested in a career in
psychiatry. The Division is also co-organising a conference
with the Royal Society of Medicine on 13 November 2012: Psychiatry as a career:
Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.
- An increasing number of Psychiatry
Summer Schools were held in 2012 in Durham, Cardiff, Edinburgh,
Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Northampton, Preston and
Sheffield.
- A ‘Top Tips’ factsheet has been
produced for consultants and trainees to assist them in helping
medical students make the best of their placement.
These are merely a few of the
initiatives taking place. If you would like to find out more
about these please contact
Charlotte Collins.
Psychiatry societies
Most UK medical schools now have psychiatry
societies. The Division Recruitment Leads are working to ensure
these psychiatry societies are given support and encouragement from
local psychiatrists.
If you would like to help support your local
psychiatry society or speak at their events please contact
Charlotte Collins. If your
nearest medical school has no psychiatry society perhaps you would
like to help set one up with interested medical students.
Please see appendix XI of the Recruitment Strategy for advice on
how to do this.
The Student Associate Scheme
The
Student Associate scheme continues to grow, with over 3000
medical students and foundation doctors registered to date. I
would exhort members to encourage all medical students and
foundation doctors with whom they have contact with to
join as a Student Associate. Student Associates
have their own:
Taster weeks feedback
In March 2012 I sent an email to all members
about the need to improve access to foundation programme taster
weeks in psychiatry and enclosed
templates that provided guidance on how to organise
these. It is difficult to assess how successful this has been
and we would value feedback from members on the uptake of these. I
would be grateful if you could provide feedback to Charlotte Collins. I strongly
encourage colleagues to offer taster weeks in psychiatry as even
with the prospect of increased numbers of F1 and F2 post in
psychiatry most foundation doctors will not do a psychiatry post
during their training.
Suggestions
Finally, at the recent International Congress
in Liverpool a successful session on recruitment was held. 65
medical students and foundation doctors also attended for free on
the Friday and a newly created Student Associate poster
presentation prize was awarded. This attracted a good number
of high quality entrants It was won by David Whiteside and
the runner-up was Emma Merrick.
The College’s recruitment related initiatives
are not set in stone and I would welcome comments and suggestions
from colleagues (both trainees and consultants), and indeed from
medical students and foundation doctors themselves. I am confident
the initiatives which are in place will improve recruitment to
psychiatry but I am always interested to hear from members with
their own views and suggestions.
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