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    Supporting Foundation Doctors

    If you are a foundation training supervisor, we have guidance below to help you support your foundation doctors. 

    The Foundation Programme represents a pivotal stage in postgraduate medical education. Recent initiatives, including Broadening the Foundation Programme and subsequent efforts to increase the number of psychiatry placements, have highlighted the benefits of exposing doctors to mental health services early in their careers.

    Evidence shows that a high-quality psychiatry placement is valuable for all foundation doctors, regardless of their future specialty choice. The knowledge and skills gained help doctors recognise and respond to mental health needs in a wide range of healthcare settings, making them better equipped to care for patients throughout their careers.

    It is equally important that foundation supervisors are equipped with appropriate guidance and resources to support doctors in their psychiatry placements. We hope the resources we have shared below are helpful. 

    UK Foundation Programme Office resources

    The UKFPO website has a number of helpful resources for supervisors:

    Good Practice Guide

    We have produced a guide to good practice in psychiatry in the Foundation Programme.

    This guide has been developed for clinical supervisors, educational supervisors, foundation programme directors, psychiatry placement leads and other educators involved in delivering foundation training in psychiatry. Its purpose is to provide practical, real-life examples from around the UK of good practice in foundation psychiatry placements. Here, teams and organisations showcase their work and give tips on how others can replicate it. 

    We don’t imagine every example will work for every organisation but rather these are a set of ideas you can draw from for your own foundation teaching programme.

    If you have examples of best practice in foundation psychiatry training that could be included in this guide, or you would like further details on any of the examples, please contact careers@rcpsych.ac.uk. 

    Further resources for foundation supervisors