What the College does
This page lists all of our key services and activities, with links to appropriate pages on the website.
Feedback from our 2021 RCPsych membership survey showed that our members would like more information about the totality of what the College does.
- Delivering the digitised Paper A, Paper B and Clinical Assessment of Skills and Competencies (CASC) exams
- Recruiting and training new examiners
- Promoting the importance of neuroscience in psychiatry
- Delivering a comprehensive CPD programme
- Validating more than 11,000 CPD submissions per year
- Supporting the Psychiatric Trainees' Committee
- Attending careers fairs and running summer schools to promote psychiatry
- Delivering the Invited Review Service
- Rolling out the College's coaching and mentoring, and wellbeing and retention strategies
- Running the Medical Student and Foundation Doctor Associate Schemes
- Delivering Portfolio Online
- Engaging with Heads of Schools of Psychiatry
- Processing and recommending trainees for completion of certificates for CCT and CESR
- Managing the CESR process, including the recruitment and training of evaluators
- Managing quality assurance of psychiatric training and evaluation
- Publishing the Quality in Training Report and Psychiatrists' Census Report
- Planning and delivering the annual MRCPsych Course Organisers' training
- Managing the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry run-through programme
- Providing careers information and support to potential and training psychiatrists
- Provide bursaries and fellowships supporting medical students and foundation doctors
- Influencing the governments at Westminster,
the Scottish Parliament,
Senedd Cymru and Northern Ireland Assembly
- Lobbying politicians and opposition parties in all four nations
- Influencing the content of the party manifestos in Westminster and Devolved Nation elections
- Responding to government and NICE consultations across the UK
- Running the award-winning Choose Psychiatry campaign
- Campaigning to promote the benefits of psychiatry
- Campaigning with the Mental Health Policy Group to promote ‘parity of esteem' for mental health services
- Campaigning on the climate emergency and ecological crisis
- Campaigning for the mental health workforce of the future
- Producing original research and data analysis to support our campaigns
- Supporting the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mental Health
- Generating high-profile media coverage in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Tracking media coverage of mental health issues
- 24/7 responding to the news agenda and journalist enquiries
- Issuing press statements
- Writing commentary articles and blog posts
- Responding to negative stories about psychiatry
- Producing RCPsych Insight membership magazine
- Publishing College reports and position statements
- Conducting member surveys
- Running the Mental Health Watch website
- Managing relationships with all NHS bodies across the UK
- Regularly liaising with other mental health charities
- Tracking the roll-out of NHS strategies across the UK
- Modelling and analysing NHS spending and NHS workforce commitments across the UK
- Updating and maintaining RCPsych's website content, including production of videos, blog posts and podcasts
- Running the College's social media accounts
- Producing the RCPsych eNewsletters
- Publishing mental health patient materials and information
- Working with Cambridge University Press to publish the College's world-leading learned books and journals, including BJPsych
- Promoting research in our journals and books with podcasts, video abstracts and events
- Working in partnership with the BMJ to publish Evidence-Based Mental Health
- Promoting other roles in the mental health multi-disciplinary team
- Promoting the benefits of ECT and defending ECT services
- Working in collaboration with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.
- Delivering ceremonies – including the RCPsych Awards, President's Lectures, New Members' Ceremonies, Specialist Registration Ceremonies and New Fellows' Ceremonies
- Delivering a comprehensive programme of paid-for and free webinars, courses and events
- Delivering run-through training and credentials
- Producing eLearning modules and podcasts
- Delivering and managing the Psychiatrists' Support Service
- Delivering a range of projects with Health Education England
- Hosting and delivering the MindEd online platform
- Delivering the annual International Congress
- Supporting our 13 faculties, three devolved councils, eight English divisions, six international divisions and 15 Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
- Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion for members, workers in mental health services, and patients and carers
- Celebrating events such as Pride, International Women's Day, South Asian History Month, Black History Month and International Day of Persons with Disabilities
- Rolling out our RCPsych International Strategy
- Supporting international volunteering
- Helping to deliver the Medical Training Initiative (MTI) scheme
- Supporting diaspora groups of psychiatrists
- Ensuring that job descriptions for psychiatrists are appropriate and realistic
- Engaging with patient and carer representatives
- Promoting psychiatry in medical schools by working with PsychSocs
- Delivering Section 12 and Approved Clinician training
- Supporting hundreds of College post and office holders
- Running annual elections across the College
- Promoting the College values of Courage, Innovation, Respect, Collaboration, Learning and Excellence.
- Delivering the Quality Networks for:
- Inpatient CAMHS
- Inpatient Mental Health Services for Deaf People
- Eating Disorders – Inpatient and Community
- Learning Disability Services – Adult Inpatient
- Learning Disability Services – Adult Community
- Perinatal Mental Health Services – Inpatient and Community
- Older Adult Mental Health Services
- Psychiatric Intensive Care Units
- Mental Health Rehabilitation Services - Inpatient
- Mental Health Rehabilitation Services - Community
- Forensic Mental Health Services – low and medium secure units
- Working Age Adult Acute Wards
- Veterans Mental Health Services
- Prison Mental Health Services
- Community CAMHS
- Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams
- Accreditation for Community Mental Health Services
- Early Intervention in Psychosis Network
- Enabling Environments
- National Enabling Environments in Prison and Probation
- Memory Services National Accreditation Programme
- Accreditation Programme for Psychological Therapies Services
- ECT Accreditation Service
- Psychiatric Liaison Accreditation Network
- Community of Communities
- Serious Incident Review Accreditation Network
- Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health
- ACP 360 – multi-source assessment for psychiatrists
- Multi-Source Assessment for Expert Psychiatric Witnesses (MAEP)
- Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance Unit (CAPSS)
- National Audit of Dementia (NAD)
- National Clinical Audit of Psychosis (NCAP)
- College Public Mental Health Unit
- Enjoying Work Quality Improvement Collaborative
- Advancing Mental Health Equality (AMHE) Quality Improvement Collaborative
- Suicide Prevention STP Transformation Programme
- Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme – covering Reducing Restrictive Practice, Sexual Safety Collaborative, and Suicide Prevention
- One-off reports and reviews setting out contemporary and historical standards, and quality indicators, in range of services
- Competence frameworks:
- Evidence-based guidelines for mental health services in Ukraine
- Evaluation of the introduction of physical activity into IAPT pathway for depression (PDF)
- Analysis and evaluation of the NHS Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) and Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES).
Read more
to receive further information regarding a career in psychiatry
