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SPECIALTIES
Psychiatry
Psychiatric training in the UK — Core Psychiatry Training, the MRCPsych, and higher training.
Psychiatry in the UK is a six-year training programme following the Foundation Programme. The first three years (Core Psychiatry Training, CT1–CT3) cover the breadth of general adult, old age, learning disability, child and adolescent, and forensic psychiatry. Successful candidates then apply for higher training (ST4–ST6) in one of six specialties: general adult, old age, child and adolescent, forensic, medical psychotherapy, or psychiatry of learning disability.
The Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) is the postgraduate qualification taken during core training. It consists of three written papers and a clinical examination (the CASC — Clinical Assessment of Skills and Competencies), an OSCE-style exam with stations covering history-taking, mental state examination, risk assessment, and communication with patients and relatives.
Workforce shortages in psychiatry have been long-standing and the specialty is one that the NHS has actively recruited for through Health Education England's national programmes. Psychiatry has historically been one of the easier specialties to enter from the Foundation Programme.
Current authoritative resources
About this page
This page is one of a set of medical school and medical careers resources on chrispaton.org, replacing the category landings of New Media Medicine (newmediamedicine.com), an early digital health blog and UK medical school applications community I ran between 2004 and 2014. The original New Media Medicine forum threads — user-generated content from that community — are not republished here; this is original framing written to help current applicants find authoritative information. Always confirm details with the official sources linked above before acting on them.