Recruitment Crisis in Psychiatry - Student BMJ Oct 11

A negative image of psychiatry, plagued by the lingering stigma, has put future medics off the speciality. With 1/3 of core training posts, there were only 0.7 applicants place. The RCPsych and BMA are concerned with these statistics and believe that there are several issues which need addressing.

One reason for these figures are so low is likely to be due to the lack of early exposure to psychiatry in medical school and foundation programmes. Also undergraduate students perceive it as not being as scientific as other specialities and wrongly view the treatment as being less effective and evidence-based. As well as the stigma of the field of medicine, often being bad-mouthed by other medics, it can be seen as being separate from the rest of medicine. It could also be due to the low level of academic psychiatrists leading to reduced exposure.

A former member of BMA junior doctors committee, explains how even if medics do not want to go into a career in psychiatry, it is important that they learn about it. She writes in the article how an experience in psychiatry has helped her in her current job as an obs and gynae trainee. For example, she now understands the effects of anorexia and depression on fertility.

The lack of exposure is affecting students' interest in the field; most students are not exposed to a psychiatry placement until they are a F2 doctor and by then most people have almost made up their choice where they want to specialise.

However with no new money available for foundation year posts, they would need to reconfigure existing tracks as psychiatry would have to come out of existing resources. The BMA, psychiatry taskforce and RCPsych hope that their efforts to improve the perception of psychiatry through earlier exposure will lead to an increase in recruitment figures and reduce the stigma.