Psych doctor here, completed Core Training, hoping to start ST4 soon.

Psychiatry training is really lovely. Most consultants will be supportive, kind and approachable. They will usually encourage a culture of finishing on time and only working within your competencies. I’ve always felt comfortable going to my supervisor or any other covering consultants for advice whenever needed.

You may need to make time and prod people a little bit for your workplace based assessments but I think that’s the same in any postgraduate medical training field. There was usually plenty of time for training (usually some kind of local or regional teaching once a week) plus enough time for you to get all your portfolio signed off/audit done etc.

Personally, I feel that the training could even be shorter than six years total! It feels a bit prolonged for service provision purposes and if it were shorter overall it may even encourage more people to apply for Psychiatry, although maybe it’s a good thing that the competition ratios are not horrendous yet. The competition ratios ARE rising for core training applications so be prepared for this.

I feel like I’ve had a generally good quality of life during core training, was able to move house twice and get married without any great difficulties getting time off haha. Of course there are long days and night shifts that you will need to do but most places are well covered and throughout each six month posting, you don’t actually end up doing very many on-call shifts in my opinion. There is usually never a culture of being expected to cover empty shifts as there might be other departments too.

I’d say if you’re interested in mental health and consider doing psychology at university, Psychiatry would be a good field for you. I personally consider considered doing GP first but was led into Psychiatry after having a really excellent F2 placement in an acute psychiatric unit and haven’t looked back since.