The development of this job description came about through the need to re-establish higher training in Psychotherapy in the Eastern region to meet the needs of trainees who wish to remain in the region and are seeking an opportunity to achieve CCT in Psychotherapy.

The national and regional perspective over the last few years has recognised that achieving single CCT in Psychotherapy is not sufficient to ensure that trainees graduating from higher training schemes find suitable employment at consultant level and the majority of recent single CCT graduates have gone on to train in a further psychiatric specialism. This had led to the development of dual training programmes as outlined.  

The five year advanced training outline integrates the training provision in both sub-specialties to enable qualification on the GMC specialist register with two Certificates of Completion of Specialist Training (CCT) as a Medical Psychotherapist and as a General Psychiatrist. The General Medical Council ratified this dual training award in January 2012

The training programme outlined in this document describes a structure for training in medical psychotherapy and general psychiatry through combined specialist training in both general psychiatry and medical psychotherapy with the aim of integrating these specialist trainings undertaken sequentially to equip the doctor to practice as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy, and/or a Consultant General Adult Psychiatrist.

The training programme is guided by an awareness of the need for the future Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy/General Adult Psychiatry to deliver expert psychotherapy and also apply expert psychotherapeutic thinking to inform patient care through consultation and reflective practice in a range of psychiatric settings.

This dual training offers a psychotherapeutic approach to the understanding of the development of the personality, which forms a bridge between both the general psychiatric and the general psychotherapeutic patient populations.  The dual training will also orientate itself to incorporating a developmental perspective for the trainee, to equip them to understand and respond to the emotional demands of working in general psychiatric settings therapeutically.

In the Eastern deanery the major model of therapy is psychoanalytic psychotherapy and for trainee’s personal therapy will be a central required part of their professional development throughout the five year training programme.

The importance of an awareness of a range of models of psychotherapy is incorporated in the dual training programme in line with the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ curriculum requirements for medical psychotherapy training.

In addition, the role of pharmacotherapy in combination with psychotherapy is a feature of both the psychiatric and the medical psychotherapeutic training of the dual trainee, who will be using psychotherapeutic approaches (alongside psychotropic medication and bio-psycho-social approaches).