Letter from the Chair of RCPsych in Scotland - December 2021

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What a quick six months! Working at the College is an enjoyable experience, more so than I expected and a welcome change of lens from my day job, really something to feed the soul. The College staff and members have been hugely welcoming, supportive and generous with their time as I’ve found my feet and for this I am grateful.

Successes

• We engaged with 409 people through the Choose Psychiatry in Scotland stand at the international congress in June.
• We have achieved a 4th consecutive 100% fill rate to core psychiatry posts.
• Continuing our Choose Psychiatry Scotland Campaign, we are planning to host an interview skills course in early Feb for CT/SAS doctors, then our first StartWell event in late March for higher trainees and new Consultants, using the additional interim funding received from NES. A new proposal will be drafted for the next financial year which will request funding for a CPS stand at International Congress 2022 which will be taking place in Edinburgh allowing a further opportunity to showcase the College, psychiatry training and careers in Scotland.
• We have begun discussions regarding the lack of availability of dual training posts in Scotland and the impact that has on our trainees.
• Our 11 members roadshows informed areas of focus, we are working through this information to feed into the College strategy. 
• This year we have successfully held 12 events with 397 attendees, alongside supporting 11 faculties. We know that members are missing the networking at events and we hope to hold two in-person events in 2022, restrictions permitting. In addition, we are finalising a fixed programme of Faculty events with an additional programme of webinars throughout the year, commencing on the 4th February with a webinar on Working With Transgender Patients.  We are also exploring the possibility of offering podcasts on a range of topics.
• We have free places for Foundation Doctors and Medical Students at our events. Please contact Angela Currie for more information regarding complimentary places at the upcoming Winter Meeting on 28 January 2022.
• We continue to influence policy and amplify the expertise and experience of our members. This includes regular engagement with the Scottish Government, including around current capacity issues, securing support and funding for a Personality Disorder National Improvement Network and building on the success of our No Wrong Door campaign. This included ahead of this year’s Budget, where we secured commitments from the Scottish Government to retain the £120M  Mental Health Recovery & Renewal Fund in full. We continue to work with the government on the development of quality standards for mental healthcare, a mental health workforce plan, and in support of the Scott Review into Mental Health Law.

As I finish off this winter blog post, I felt a certain pressure to provide you with a literary reference. To bring some cheer, I’d like to think for a moment about Shakespeare, not his tragedies but his comedies in which he often adopted slapstick, for example, he incorporated chase scenes into his comedies, such as in his play The Comedy of Errors. 

I am a huge fan of slapstick with Laurel and Hardy, rather than Shakespeare, my heroes in this arena. 

I was watching, again, their film Liberty and in particular, the wrong trousers scene played out high on a construction site. Our duo realise they have each other’s trousers on and try to remedy this high above the streets. The sketch blends the right amount of comedy and terror to entice you to keep watching. Will our heroes fall or manage to find safety again on terra firma?

But why for me is this a metaphor for the last year? It is not, you may be surprised to hear the element of farce, but the camaraderie, the duo’s desire to do the right thing, their watching out for each other, the fact that they were never both down at the same time and could pull each other up. Perhaps most of all it was that despite their desperate situation they did not lose hope, continuing to strive for a better outcome, carrying each other along.

I began this blog talking about the hope that was apparent as we met during the Roadshows. Hope will be hugely important in sustaining us through this winter and into spring. It was one of the things that made the greatest impression on me in many of our meetings. That despite the challenges we face, hope is still present, there are things we can do, working together to improve the situation for our patients and ourselves.