When I Grow Up - Psychiatry

Though many of you may be currently knocking down the doors of medical school, and thinking about the medical school entry requirements, it is never too early to start casting an eye towards your future specialty choice. This is not only important to bring some light to the end of an awfully long tunnel, but also for pragmatic considerations as for a vast majority of specialties you need to plan early. Long gone are the days where a recently post-graduate, junior doctor could stick their hand up and enter a training program – in the current environment, there are hundreds of hopefuls every year vying for the 1-10 training spots nation-wide in each specialty.

 

This article has been written to give you some background on the specialty of a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are trained by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. The specialty focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disease and conditions. In a time of widespread mental health issues, which are severely undertreated and resulting in an alarming rate of suicide, psychiatrists have a vital job in the community. The psychiatry Fellowship Program takes a minimum of 60 months full-time equivalent to complete. During the training period, trainees work as registrars in hospitals and clinics, where they are supervised by experienced psychiatrists. Psychiatry registrars (trainees) are able to have quite a lot of flexibility in their employment, and there are part-time and full-time work options. 

 

I was fortunate enough to spend my first rotation as an intern in the mental health ward. As a junior doctor, it was a very challenging time, as there is really an insufficient amount of training in medical school to properly prepare you for the vast range of mental health conditions, most of which are very difficult to manage and treat. Advantages of this specialty include the flexibility and diversity of practice; you are able to work part-time as a trainee psychiatrist, and they have very reasonable hours of work (i.e. you would very rarely do more than your allotted hours per day), and psychiatrists are able to work across a huge amount of fields and are not restricted to just hospital practice. Psychiatrists can work clinically (with elderly people, young people, individuals with intellectual disabilities and so forth), in forensic practice, neuropsychiatry, with corporate bodies/firms in organisational psychiatry, in research, and in assisting the courts as expert witnesses.

 

The profession is extremely rewarding, challenging and very diverse. Psychiatrists aren’t just restricted to the monotony of hospital-based practice, and are able to expand their services across public, private, corporate, and legal spheres. Although the conditions psychiatrists deal with are certainly highly challenging, and often refractory to treatment, the opportunities for treatment and management improvement in the future is immense. There is still a huge amount that is unknown about psychiatric conditions, and you can be at the forefront of future discoveries in the specialty. Finally, another advantage is that junior doctors technically need to only have completed their intern year to join the program, and the entry requirements are much less arduous and time consuming compared to other specialties.

 

Individuals who enjoy working in vital areas, with challenging patients, dealing with the unknown, and having a diverse practice will be particularly well suited for this specialty. As mentioned above, the specialty can also allow practitioners to be quite senior in the field much younger than other careers, and there is a much more realistic expectation of a very good work/life balance in psychiatry.

 

Stay tuned for more blogs where we’ll explain a little more about what different specialities entail!

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