General practice and brief psychotherapy: a novel psychiatric training post

Abstract

Many psychiatrists now work successfully in the primary care setting. Although a primary care post might be considered to be a useful experience by most trainees, few undertake such an attachment, owing to lacked opportunities and concern that such a placement would delay career progress or be at the expense of psychiatric subspeciality experience (Burns, 1994). For general practice posts to be integrated into psychiatric training, these concerns need to be addressed. One solution has been a post shared with general psychiatry (Balmer, 1993). This paper describes an alternative approach, a post combining subspeciality experience in psychotherapy within the practice setting, with working as a general practitioner (GP) trainee.