Core Psychiatry Training - Where should you apply?

In this article we break down the 2018 GMC National Training Survey data by region, to find out which deaneries are rated highest for overall satisfaction and workload for Core Psychiatry Training. We also compare how competitive each deanery is to get into.

Choosing where to apply is a decision that involves a number of personal factors – but we hope that this snapshot will provide an interesting and thought-provoking overview to kickstart your research.

Here is the result of our number crunching:

We’ve plotted overall satisfaction against workload for each deanery, and represented the national averages as the axes for comparison. For example, all data points to the right of the y axis have a higher than national average satisfaction rating.

Deaneries were ranked by competition ratios from the most recent application round that had data available – in this case, it was from 2017. The most competitive deaneries are shown in red, those that are moderately competitive in yellow, and the least competitive in green. However, it is important to look at trends of competition ratios from the past few years as it can be misleading to focus on data from a single year:

Key Takeaways

KSS and Scotland rank highest for overall satisfaction.

Trainees from Kent, Surrey and Sussex and Scotland deaneries report the highest overall satisfaction ratings with good workload levels for their psychiatry programmes. Scotland has remained averagely competitive over the past few years, whereas the competition ratios for KSS have varied hugely.

Yorkshire and the Humber has consistently had competition ratios under 1, however, performs well for both types of trainee rating.

At the other end of the spectrum, East Midlands deanery has the poorest scores across the board for satisfaction and workload, and yet remains one of the more competitive programmes.

Overall Satisfaction correlates with Workload.

As is obvious on the graph, there is a strong correlation between the workload level and satisfaction the more manageable the workload. There does not seem to be much correlation between good trainee ratings and competitiveness of the deaneries.