A survey on psychiatric training in greece from trainees’ perspective

Abstract

Introduction

In order to promote the harmonisation of training in psychiatry and facilitate mobility of psychiatrists across Europe, the European Board of Psychiatry is developing appropriate training recommendations. In a recently conducted European survey, Greece was partly under-represented and there is lack of recent data regarding national psychiatric training.

Objectives

The present survey aimed to investigate, from a trainee's point of view, the degree of compliance of Greek training centres to what the European Board of Psychiatry recommends.

Methods

An on-line survey, accessible only to invited trainees, was constructed in close adherence to previous questionnaires and guidelines set by the European Board of Psychiatry. Training centres in psychiatry were identified and trainees were invited by e-mail to complete the survey in autumn 2010. All responses were tracked and only valid completed questionnaires were included in the final results.

Results

Preliminary results from the first quarter of the sample clearly indicate that the overwhelming majority of Greek psychiatric trainees do not have individualized training programs (88%) and logbooks (99%). There is no auditing experience (90%) and no exposure to internal (90%) or external (93%) evaluation. On the other hand, structured theoretical training is available to the majority of trainees (94%) although psychotherapeutic supervision is offered to only 25% of trainees.

Conclusions

Much improvement had been observed over the last decade in psychiatric training in Greece. However, results of the present survey show that there is still inadequate compliance to some of the recommendations developed by the European Board of Psychiatry.