The Royal Medico-Psychological Association Reports on Psychiatric Education

Abstract

In 1965 the Education Committee drew up a questionnaire on postgraduate training which was circulated to recognized psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units in general hospitab. The results have been published in this Journal (November 1968, 114, 1441). The Committee recognized that this method of inquiry was by no means ideal, and in order to provide confirmatory information another questionnaire on postgraduate experience and training was circulated to a group of consultant psychiatrists in the United Kingdom. This group comprised all those who were appointed as consultants in adult psychiatry (including psychotherapy) by public appointment (i.e. not personally upgraded) for the first time between 1 October 1963 and 30 September 1966, and who had six or more N.H.S. sessions. A list of all those consultants who were thought to fall into this group was compiled with the help of Regional Hospital Boards and the Ministry of Health, and 191 questionnaires were sent out, with a request that the form be returned uncompleted if the individual had been wrongly assigned.