Doctors leaders have declared that the number of juniors opting to train as psychiatrists must double to maintain a high-quality service.
The CCSC psychiatry subcommittee heard last week that psychiatry has the least competition for core training places of all specialties.
Medical Education and Training Programme England figures show there were just 1.2 applicants for every core psychiatry training place advertised for 2011, down from 2.6 applicants per post the previous year, and four in 2009.
They show that there have been 581 applications for 456 psychiatry core training 1 posts this year, and half of those doctors will apply to other specialties as well.
Unfilled posts
Outside Kent, London, Surrey and Sussex, all deaneries in England had fewer applications for psychiatry than they had training posts available this year.
Bristol consultant psychiatrist Robin Arnold (pictured) said only 15 applications had been made for 20 psychiatry training places in his deanery, and he blamed a historical over-reliance on foreign-qualified doctors training as psychiatrists in the NHS.
Nottingham consultant psychiatrist Ola Junaid said there had been no significant drop in the number of UK medical graduates choosing psychiatry, but that the number of international graduates coming to train as psychiatrists had fallen.
Trainees struggling
The Medical Education and Training Programme England figures also show that trainee psychiatrists were struggling through their training, with only 44 per cent progressing into specialty training 4 having been judged to be at the required level last year. And 53 per cent of these were held back, mainly by exam failures.
CCSC psychiatry subcommittee deputy chair Shantanu Datta said currently around 3 per cent of UK medical graduates chose psychiatry, but this needed to double if all training places were to be successfully filled.
Dr Arnold told the committee there were three reasons for the low number of UK graduates choosing psychiatry as a specialty: recruitment panels for medical schools were too surgically biased; undergraduate education was focused on general practice and surgery, but not psychiatry; and that fewer than 20 per cent of foundation doctors experienced psychiatry placements.
Dr Datta said recommendations made in the report ‘Foundation for Excellence: An Evaluation of the Foundation Programme’ that more community-based placements in specialties such as psychiatry should be made available, could increase young doctors’ exposure to psychiatry, but he questioned whether that would be enough to increase interest in the specialty sufficiently.
Source: BMA
