In this page:

Section 1: Information about the writer

Reem Mudawi

ST4 Child and Adolescent psychiatry, London Deanery.

MBBS, MRCPsych

I completed my F1 and F2 year in Yorkshire Deanery, in Grimsby and Hull respectively.

I completed my core training in Psychiatry in London deanery.

 

Section 2: Scope of practice in the UK:

As a Core Trainee

 

In practice as a core trainee you will most likely be working in either an inpatient or outpatient setting with the exception of liaison posts in which you will be based at an acute hospital site.

 

You will be responsible for:

  • The medical care of patients in inpatient settings. You are limited to the investigations that you can perform in psychiatric settings such as taking routine bloods and ECG´s. Only emergency medicines can be given by IV route. for example if you needed to rehydrate a patient you would have to send them to your nearest Emergency Department or discuss with medics etc.
  • Whilst on call you will be expected to prescribe emergency psychiatric medications out of hours but all other long term psychiatric medications are initiated by the consultant or senior registrar in your team or on call etc.
  • Documentation of ward rounds and routine admin such as discharge summaries, reports for hearings. There are some places in the country where there are foundation trainees doing psychiatry but where there are not you often may be the most junior in the team.
  • Psychotherapy experience: As a core trainee part of your sign of in your final CT3 ARCP is two have completed one long and one short case in specified psychotherapy modalities such as CBT and Psychodyanmic psychotherpy.
  • ECT experience is also a core competency
  • Completion of worked based place assessments , WBPA´s as outlined by the curriculum laid out by the royal college of Psychiatry.
  • Audit, Paper appraisals and Presentations are mandator¡y and research is always desirable .

 

quick-tip-e1366327676423In psychiatry you will have as a core and higher trainee weekly supervision with your consultant. This supervision session is not meant for sole for the discussion of your clinical work , in fact in should not but may for part of it. The hour is meant to be spent doing assessments , discussing audit and research and taking advantage of the rare phenomenon of having a protected hour per  week with your consultant..

 

As a Registrar

As a REGISTRAR, you will be performing mental health act assessments which may involve you being part of a decision to section a patient, you must have section 12, S12, approval to do this and most people do the 2 day course at end of CT3 year as you must have your membership and have passed your core training to apply for this.

As well as liking after your patients you will also be expected to appear in tribunal and manager´s hearings , consultants also do this . And there are some patients who can only have their consultant in hearings, this will be clarified in your training.

As a Consultant

As a consultant you lead the MDT and be responsible for clinical care  as well as managerial roles which can be expected